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3.38 AVERAGE
3.38 AVERAGE
3 stars. A classic twist on my queen Agatha Christie. A list. 9 people. How are they connected? Their connection (no spoilers) could have been fleshed out a tiny bit more? And the twist, while mildly unexpected, could have been a little better. Overall a good beach read but too many perspectives to sort through which made it tricky to stay engaged.
J'avais déjà lu et pas aimé 8 crimes parfaits du même auteur.
Ici l'histoire est un peu moins prévisible et l'inspiration assumée d'Ils étaient Dix d'Agatha Christie était réussie.
Un polar assez divertissant et rapide à lire.
Ici l'histoire est un peu moins prévisible et l'inspiration assumée d'Ils étaient Dix d'Agatha Christie était réussie.
Un polar assez divertissant et rapide à lire.
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
This book was a fun idea and I was invested. I enjoyed the ending for the most part, but I was very confused on the last chapter of the book and feel like it was unnecessary to include and not needed … I would have been content with the book ending with the letter. I also felt like there were a few plot holes.
You can see my review here: https://youtu.be/h3YS_DBsUKg
dark
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
dark
mysterious
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
I was wavering between a 3 and a 4 star. I would give it a 3.5 (or maybe 3.75)
I picked this book after having a crush on Eight Perfect Murders, I wanted to check out more of Peter Swanson's work, I guess, since the type of crime/mystery that he writes is exactly my cup of tea.
Nine Lives is another serial killer/crime/mystery novel. The list of 9 innocent lives being deprived sooner or later because of a long forgotten tragedy. Compared to EPM, this book seems to be even more adaptable with all the mentions of sex and love affairs (unfortunately, which is also what I don't particularly like about this book)
After finishing 2 books of his, I can kind of see that Swanson has some favourite set of characters he would like to involve in his work (definitely always has an FBI agent who is somewhat a victim and a Vietnamese American (excuse me, I can't help paying attention to my compatriots). I also believe Swanson is a big fan of Agatha Christie because once again, he references some of her works in this book, along with a couple of other crime novels. One thing that I like about Swanson's work is that how he let the events unfold or develop his plot is quite consistent - starting off with (at least) one death, followed by a couple others as parts of the root mystery unfolds and eventually in the last two chapters, we find out the ultimate perpetrator with a "monologue" of the reasons for what they did and how they did it.
Moving on to things that I don't like about this novel. I mentioned one bullet point above that there was a fair amount (fair amount to me would probably mean little to most people) of mention of sex and love affairs that I find kind of irrelevant. If this book were adapted into the big screens, I would say these details are kind of exploitation baits. Besides, I don't have a good impression of the main character in this book. [spoiler alert] I find it disturbing that Jonathan Grant was having a sexual affairs with someone more than 20 years younger than him, and the fact that he admitted to seeing Alison Horne as his daughter. In his letter, it also seems that he put the biggest blame on other people for the misfortune of his little sister while I was thinking what kind of brother agrees to such a throttling dare on his own sibling. [end of spoiler] The biggest part I don't like/don't highly value in Nine Lives is that it seems Swanson was too greedy in this serial killer case while trying to keep everything compact in a 300+ pages book. Not all the victims were portrayed well enough, I literally had to keep flipping back and forth to the first page to find out what is the background of a character, for example, I still can't remember what is the storyline of Jay Coates.
Regardless, I think Swanson would still be my go-to just because I really enjoy the cases that he comes up with.
I picked this book after having a crush on Eight Perfect Murders, I wanted to check out more of Peter Swanson's work, I guess, since the type of crime/mystery that he writes is exactly my cup of tea.
Nine Lives is another serial killer/crime/mystery novel. The list of 9 innocent lives being deprived sooner or later because of a long forgotten tragedy. Compared to EPM, this book seems to be even more adaptable with all the mentions of sex and love affairs (unfortunately, which is also what I don't particularly like about this book)
After finishing 2 books of his, I can kind of see that Swanson has some favourite set of characters he would like to involve in his work (definitely always has an FBI agent who is somewhat a victim and a Vietnamese American (excuse me, I can't help paying attention to my compatriots). I also believe Swanson is a big fan of Agatha Christie because once again, he references some of her works in this book, along with a couple of other crime novels. One thing that I like about Swanson's work is that how he let the events unfold or develop his plot is quite consistent - starting off with (at least) one death, followed by a couple others as parts of the root mystery unfolds and eventually in the last two chapters, we find out the ultimate perpetrator with a "monologue" of the reasons for what they did and how they did it.
Moving on to things that I don't like about this novel. I mentioned one bullet point above that there was a fair amount (fair amount to me would probably mean little to most people) of mention of sex and love affairs that I find kind of irrelevant. If this book were adapted into the big screens, I would say these details are kind of exploitation baits. Besides, I don't have a good impression of the main character in this book. [spoiler alert] I find it disturbing that Jonathan Grant was having a sexual affairs with someone more than 20 years younger than him, and the fact that he admitted to seeing Alison Horne as his daughter. In his letter, it also seems that he put the biggest blame on other people for the misfortune of his little sister while I was thinking what kind of brother agrees to such a throttling dare on his own sibling. [end of spoiler] The biggest part I don't like/don't highly value in Nine Lives is that it seems Swanson was too greedy in this serial killer case while trying to keep everything compact in a 300+ pages book. Not all the victims were portrayed well enough, I literally had to keep flipping back and forth to the first page to find out what is the background of a character, for example, I still can't remember what is the storyline of Jay Coates.
Regardless, I think Swanson would still be my go-to just because I really enjoy the cases that he comes up with.
Nine Lives is the first book by Peter Swanson that I have read. I did enjoy the premise, though the plot was slower than I usually enjoy. The audiobook was well done.