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3.32 AVERAGE
3.32 AVERAGE
Twisty turny puzzley Christmassy murder.
I enjoyed spending Christmas with this terrible family and their terrible secrets. The escalation of the body count and orphaned children were a little much for me. I loved the reveals of the secrets at the end and the resolution.
I enjoyed spending Christmas with this terrible family and their terrible secrets. The escalation of the body count and orphaned children were a little much for me. I loved the reveals of the secrets at the end and the resolution.
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
The Westing Game for adults at christmas in a total locked house
dark
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
I found this a struggle to read. Not sure I would recommend it to others.
2.5 stars
[This book was provided to me by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review]
A perfect book for puzzlers.
Personally, I didn’t get along very well with this mystery, which is a real shame because the premise—an isolated/snowed-in house, a murderer among us picking us off one by one, esoteric clues left behind by an eccentric old woman that purport to lead to fortune—is all right up my alley. However, the prose style just didn’t work for me. The characters felt more like dolls maneuvered through the plot than like real people, and I found their dialogue weirdly unreal.
I wanted to like our heroine, who is a talented historical seamstress with a desire to veer into couture fashion, but I felt like this cool part of her personality got left by the wayside. She parades around in very cool-sounding outfits, but the author doesn’t do much of interest with this (fascinating) vocation.
The author clearly wanted the readers to get a chance at cracking some additional puzzles outside of the story. She therefore instructs the readers that she has hidden anagrams of the gifts from the “12 Days of Christmas” song within the book for us to find. This is all well and good, and fun, but as I read chapter after chapter I got the impression that the author’s delight in word games took precedent over her delight in the novel, and more work was put into those word games than in making a believable story or compelling characters. The culprit is also painfully obvious from nearly the beginning, and so the ‘big reveal’ felt long overdue and also unearned—and then the climax just got silly.
This is a book with a (refreshingly) overtly queer (bisexual) heroine, which becomes plot- and character-relevant, so if you’re looking for a fun, quirky, unabashedly queer holiday mystery, this is definitely the book for you. I just didn’t connect with the plot or the characters.
[This book was provided to me by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review]
A perfect book for puzzlers.
Personally, I didn’t get along very well with this mystery, which is a real shame because the premise—an isolated/snowed-in house, a murderer among us picking us off one by one, esoteric clues left behind by an eccentric old woman that purport to lead to fortune—is all right up my alley. However, the prose style just didn’t work for me. The characters felt more like dolls maneuvered through the plot than like real people, and I found their dialogue weirdly unreal.
I wanted to like our heroine, who is a talented historical seamstress with a desire to veer into couture fashion, but I felt like this cool part of her personality got left by the wayside. She parades around in very cool-sounding outfits, but the author doesn’t do much of interest with this (fascinating) vocation.
The author clearly wanted the readers to get a chance at cracking some additional puzzles outside of the story. She therefore instructs the readers that she has hidden anagrams of the gifts from the “12 Days of Christmas” song within the book for us to find. This is all well and good, and fun, but as I read chapter after chapter I got the impression that the author’s delight in word games took precedent over her delight in the novel, and more work was put into those word games than in making a believable story or compelling characters. The culprit is also painfully obvious from nearly the beginning, and so the ‘big reveal’ felt long overdue and also unearned—and then the climax just got silly.
This is a book with a (refreshingly) overtly queer (bisexual) heroine, which becomes plot- and character-relevant, so if you’re looking for a fun, quirky, unabashedly queer holiday mystery, this is definitely the book for you. I just didn’t connect with the plot or the characters.
Fun thriller with not much brainpower required to stay involved. Didn't have me gripped all the way through but I found the story interesting enough to keep me going through to the end.
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
mysterious
sad
slow-paced
mysterious
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No