Reviews with content warning for Bullying - The Final Party

Reviews tagging 'Bullying'

The Final Party by A.A. Chaudhuri

1 review

yvo_about_books's review

2.0

Finished reading: May 12th 2023

"Maybe I'm wrong, maybe I'm just being overly suspicious. I hope I am. Because rightly or wrongly, they'd do best to leave the past in the past."

*** A copy of this book was kindly provided to me by Netgalley and Hera in exchange for an honest review. Thank you! ***

WARNING: it's unpopular opinion time again!!

I've been meaning to try this author for quite some time now, and I couldn't resist The Final Party after reading the blurb. I have great memories from visiting Sorrento when I was younger, and I was looking forward to revisit this magical Italian destination in this story. I was also intrigued by the premise, with one of the characters ending up dead and the mystery kind of having that locked-room vibe. I fully expected to have an excellent time with this book... But sadly, it wasn't ment to be.

First of all I have to stress that I still love the premise of this book, with the six friends going on vacation and one of them ending up dead. The prologue had a lot of promise, and I was looking forward to a great time discovering who died and who was behind their death. What I didn't expect was to have no body at all showing up until almost reaching the end of the story. Yes, I mean that the actual prologue doesn't happen until at least 90% into the story, and this was quite a disappointment to be honest. Why? Well, The Final Party isn't exactly the locked-room whodunit I was expecting, and I can't say that I enjoyed what the plot offered instead.

The Final Party uses a multiple POV structure, with no less than seven! different POVs as well as flashbacks to the past. This could get quite tedious, and especially since the characters started to sound quite similar before long. I was never able to warm up to any of them, and this lack of connection was made even worse by the fact that the main focus of this story seems to be on repeating their character traits and physical descriptions over and over again. And I mean this literally: when the POV switches, the next character in line deems it necessary to repeat the same descriptions AGAIN, up until the point you want to tear out your hair and start screaming. I also don't get why the six characters are supposed to be friends, because they sure don't come over that way. They are constantly bitching and whining about each other, and they didn't behave like close friends AT ALL. It was all very superficial and immature to be honest, and with such a huge part of the story focusing on the group of characters, it's easy to understand why I ended up having such a hard time reading The Final Party.

Another thing I hated was the constant mention of the secrets and cliffhanger chapter endings without giving us a little hint at the truth in return. While I like surprises, having the secrets and past events referred to over and over again without any clarification got old very fast. I'm talking about at least three quarters of the book, where nothing much happened except for a constant repeat of the same things... It made me want to throw my kindle against the wall. I'm honestly not sure why I even bothered to finish The Final Party other than that I didn't want to have to deal with two DNF in a row... But I sure regret having wasted so much time on this story, because not even the ending was satisfying. In fact, it was mostly an anti-climax, and extremely rushed at that.

All in all, unfortunately I most definitely didn't have a good time reading The Final Party despite the promising blurb. The pace is extremely slow during most of the story, the characters are extremely unlikeable, there are way too many repetitions and the plot itself very unsatisfying. The final part felt rushed and too much like the author tried to include as many 'shocking' twists as possible... With the result that this story lost the little credibility it had. That said, I've seen a lot of positive reviews, so it might just be my fickle reading mood acting up again... Just don't say I haven't warned you if you end up damaging your kindle in the process.

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