Scan barcode
heather_renae's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
klabbie's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
The best of the series so far. A real nail-biter.
lcolium's review against another edition
4.0
I found the ending to be kind of abrupt and almost like it could be the ending of the series, but other than that, found myself unable to put the book down.
romanici's review against another edition
5.0
Fabulous. Favorite author, and this one didn’t disappoint. The series has been slowly moving toward the events that occurred in this book. Tense, atmospheric, strong sense of place. Excellent all the way around.
billymac1962's review against another edition
1.0
I can't believe it. I just can't. But here it is:
I'm done. I'm done with Three Pines.
After 8 novels mostly set in this lovely remote Quebec village, interesting characters and storylines, it was looking as if Louse Penny couldn't lose me if she tried. If you read my review for her previous book, The Beautiful Mystery, you may remember I cut into Nancy Pearl, a well known US Librarian and book reviewer/recommender. I took her to task on the comment she made about this series, how the setting in Three Pines was "cloying" (I don't recall how many books she was into the series at that point). I couldn't have disagreed more. Each time I picked up a new Penny novel, to be once again in the village was again and again a comfort for me.
Until now.
Cloying? Jesus. If only it was just that. I still can't believe how this novel annoyed me on so many levels. I'm going to have to hide some of these behind spoiler tags. How did How The Light Gets In annoy me? Let me count the ways:
It's early morning in Three Pines. A visitor wakes at 6am after an overnight snowfall and goes to the window. There's Olivier already out shoveling walkways, and has totally cleared off her car. Aaaaw. And there's Gabri, out delivering coffee and bagels to the villagers who can't make it out to the Bistro. Oh, and he's shoveling off everyone's porches to boot. Give me a break.
Gamache returns to his B & B room at 12:30am, after telling Gabri earlier in the evening he was ok, didn't need anything to eat, and Gabri has an early morning. Yet, in his room are two ham sandwiches, cookies, and hot chocolate. Aaaaw.
This, yes, cloying behaviour of the villagers was running so rampant as to be nauseating.
At any given point I was expecting a unicorn to come prancing out of the woods.
Penny's annoying habit of throwing brief French words into dialogue. Look, most of these characters are francophones. They are obviously speaking French to one another, so what is the point of throwing in a "Oui" or "C'est ca"? Seriously.
How long did the Getting Internet to the Village activities take? Seemed like 200 pages. Holy crap, Louise. Get on with it.
Poetry. My God, I hate poetry. This novel innundates the reader with it. Over and over with the same damn quotes.
And in what world is everyone, and I mean everyone in the area, digging poetry and making it soooooo relevant to the case at hand. Everyone in this story seems so annoyingly refined with their loves of poetry, classical music, and art. God, LET ME OUT!!!
About the one of the plotlines. Really? You expect me to buy into the fact that companies can be awarded contracts for MAJOR bridge and road maintenance
and the work doesn't get done but hundreds of millions exchange hands, and NO ONE NOTICES THE WORK NOT DONE? Hello...taxpayers? Municipal politicians? Journalists? Come on.
Oh, and yeah...for the crescendo, the grand plan: Blow up a bridge with bombs and then blame the government for poor maintenance so the people will finally vote Quebec out of Canada and you can be King of Quebec.
Yeah: no one will blame THE BOMBS.
Seriously, Louise?
The whole business of the team trying to save files while at the other end, the bad guys are erasing them. This went on for a while.
Maybe I'll give Louise a pass on this one. I'm an IT guy, in one of the most advanced and secure environments in the country. Do you know how long it takes to delete a bunch of files? The time it takes to type: rm -rf
And these guys would have had backups so any hesitation to do this would have been stupid.
For all the work and effort and RISK of gaining access to the Surete's system. This could all have been avoided had Jerome the arse mentioned the Premier in the first place. They risked everything to find out what Jerome already knew. WTF?
The villagers are so selflessly protective of the Surete. To the point they're risking their lives. Yes, it's getting annoying.
So senior Surete officers need to get to Three Pines pronto. But no one seems to know exactly where this tiny village exists. Hmm...let's see, somewhere south of Montreal, north of Vermont, ummm....
THERE HAVE ONLY BEEN NINE FREAKING MURDERS THERE IN AS MANY YEARS.
And, this, la piece de resistance:
And so, at the end, all is well. Jean-Guy has married Annie, and at the reception he dances. With Gamache. Yes. With. Gamache. And resisting to urge to LAY HIS HEAD ON HIS SHOULDER.
Jesus Christ.
Full disclosure: My stepson is gay and happily married to his partner. They kissed and danced at their wedding. It was very nice. This is what gay dudes do.
NOT STRAIGHT ONES.
And there you have it. I am dumbfounded at the 4.41 rating (the highest in the series) for this novel.
Is this a case of familiarity breeds contempt? Perhaps. Perhaps there's just something wrong with me.
But I'll have you know that while it pained me to shoot down a work by the lovely Ms Penny, I have to be completely honest with how I feel.
And I feel I won't be reading more of this series for a long, long time, if at all.
One of the biggest reading disappointments I've ever had.
(The quint plotline barely saves this novel from a one-star review. But I'm rounding down.)
I'm done. I'm done with Three Pines.
After 8 novels mostly set in this lovely remote Quebec village, interesting characters and storylines, it was looking as if Louse Penny couldn't lose me if she tried. If you read my review for her previous book, The Beautiful Mystery, you may remember I cut into Nancy Pearl, a well known US Librarian and book reviewer/recommender. I took her to task on the comment she made about this series, how the setting in Three Pines was "cloying" (I don't recall how many books she was into the series at that point). I couldn't have disagreed more. Each time I picked up a new Penny novel, to be once again in the village was again and again a comfort for me.
Until now.
Cloying? Jesus. If only it was just that. I still can't believe how this novel annoyed me on so many levels. I'm going to have to hide some of these behind spoiler tags. How did How The Light Gets In annoy me? Let me count the ways:
It's early morning in Three Pines. A visitor wakes at 6am after an overnight snowfall and goes to the window. There's Olivier already out shoveling walkways, and has totally cleared off her car. Aaaaw. And there's Gabri, out delivering coffee and bagels to the villagers who can't make it out to the Bistro. Oh, and he's shoveling off everyone's porches to boot. Give me a break.
Gamache returns to his B & B room at 12:30am, after telling Gabri earlier in the evening he was ok, didn't need anything to eat, and Gabri has an early morning. Yet, in his room are two ham sandwiches, cookies, and hot chocolate. Aaaaw.
This, yes, cloying behaviour of the villagers was running so rampant as to be nauseating.
At any given point I was expecting a unicorn to come prancing out of the woods.
Penny's annoying habit of throwing brief French words into dialogue. Look, most of these characters are francophones. They are obviously speaking French to one another, so what is the point of throwing in a "Oui" or "C'est ca"? Seriously.
Spoiler
How long did the Getting Internet to the Village activities take? Seemed like 200 pages. Holy crap, Louise. Get on with it.
Poetry. My God, I hate poetry. This novel innundates the reader with it. Over and over with the same damn quotes.
And in what world is everyone, and I mean everyone in the area, digging poetry and making it soooooo relevant to the case at hand. Everyone in this story seems so annoyingly refined with their loves of poetry, classical music, and art. God, LET ME OUT!!!
Spoiler
About the one of the plotlines. Really? You expect me to buy into the fact that companies can be awarded contracts for MAJOR bridge and road maintenance
and the work doesn't get done but hundreds of millions exchange hands, and NO ONE NOTICES THE WORK NOT DONE? Hello...taxpayers? Municipal politicians? Journalists? Come on.
Oh, and yeah...for the crescendo, the grand plan: Blow up a bridge with bombs and then blame the government for poor maintenance so the people will finally vote Quebec out of Canada and you can be King of Quebec.
Yeah: no one will blame THE BOMBS.
Seriously, Louise?
Spoiler
The whole business of the team trying to save files while at the other end, the bad guys are erasing them. This went on for a while.
Maybe I'll give Louise a pass on this one. I'm an IT guy, in one of the most advanced and secure environments in the country. Do you know how long it takes to delete a bunch of files? The time it takes to type: rm -rf
And these guys would have had backups so any hesitation to do this would have been stupid.
Spoiler
For all the work and effort and RISK of gaining access to the Surete's system. This could all have been avoided had Jerome the arse mentioned the Premier in the first place. They risked everything to find out what Jerome already knew. WTF?
The villagers are so selflessly protective of the Surete. To the point they're risking their lives. Yes, it's getting annoying.
So senior Surete officers need to get to Three Pines pronto. But no one seems to know exactly where this tiny village exists. Hmm...let's see, somewhere south of Montreal, north of Vermont, ummm....
THERE HAVE ONLY BEEN NINE FREAKING MURDERS THERE IN AS MANY YEARS.
And, this, la piece de resistance:
Spoiler
And so, at the end, all is well. Jean-Guy has married Annie, and at the reception he dances. With Gamache. Yes. With. Gamache. And resisting to urge to LAY HIS HEAD ON HIS SHOULDER.
Jesus Christ.
Full disclosure: My stepson is gay and happily married to his partner. They kissed and danced at their wedding. It was very nice. This is what gay dudes do.
NOT STRAIGHT ONES.
And there you have it. I am dumbfounded at the 4.41 rating (the highest in the series) for this novel.
Is this a case of familiarity breeds contempt? Perhaps. Perhaps there's just something wrong with me.
But I'll have you know that while it pained me to shoot down a work by the lovely Ms Penny, I have to be completely honest with how I feel.
And I feel I won't be reading more of this series for a long, long time, if at all.
One of the biggest reading disappointments I've ever had.
(The quint plotline barely saves this novel from a one-star review. But I'm rounding down.)
amlibera's review against another edition
4.0
Louise Penny hits a great balance between cozy mystery and intelligent suspense- this is one of the best in the series.
sjruskin's review against another edition
5.0
Excellent! This series just gets better and better. I throughly recommend them all.
rebeconda's review against another edition
5.0
Louise Penny is a masterful storyteller - at this point in the series I am fully immersed in the world and characters in three pines. Each book on its own is lovely, but it is the meta narrative of the series that has really captured me. This was my first time listening vs reading and I loved the voice of the narrator.
luciearan's review against another edition
5.0
V sérii "Případy vrchního inspektora Gamache", na sebe jednotlivé knihy navazují a tak se dá předpokládat, že k 9. dílu se většinou dopracují jen ti, kteří si tuto sérii oblíbili. V tomto případě, by pak četba obzvláště ztratila na poutavosti, bez znalosti předchozích událostí a souvislostí, které jsou v něm několikrát zmíněny a na které se tu odkazuje.
Pro mě jsou knihy této série, skutečně srdeční záležitostí. Nebyl snad jediný díl, který by mě zklamal a tak si je šetřím a dopřávám, jako odměnu i pohlazení.
A i když si to jen nerada přiznávám, z tohoto dílu jsem však, na základě anotace, měla docela strach a už nějakou dobu jeho přečtení, odkládala. Louise Penny ale, opět nezklamala - naopak. Příběh je to skvěle vystavěný, o "pětce" jsem neměla tušení a sama o sobě byla velice zajímavá. Příběh samotného Gamache, i když byl trochu neuvěřitelný, pak působil velice silně. Pro mě je tato kniha zatím, nejlepší z celé série. Kdyby byla možnost dát vyšší počet hvězdiček, s nadšením přihazuji.
Pro mě jsou knihy této série, skutečně srdeční záležitostí. Nebyl snad jediný díl, který by mě zklamal a tak si je šetřím a dopřávám, jako odměnu i pohlazení.
A i když si to jen nerada přiznávám, z tohoto dílu jsem však, na základě anotace, měla docela strach a už nějakou dobu jeho přečtení, odkládala. Louise Penny ale, opět nezklamala - naopak. Příběh je to skvěle vystavěný, o "pětce" jsem neměla tušení a sama o sobě byla velice zajímavá. Příběh samotného Gamache, i když byl trochu neuvěřitelný, pak působil velice silně. Pro mě je tato kniha zatím, nejlepší z celé série. Kdyby byla možnost dát vyšší počet hvězdiček, s nadšením přihazuji.
mcearl12's review against another edition
5.0
I listened and read this in turn—love the narration, love the story, love this author!