A review by aelwood
Under the Harrow by Flynn Berry

1.0

I was curious about reading this book after seeing a local review at Powell's Books, however, I found it to be very annoying, slow, and dry. The writer uses too many elaborate descriptions for a mystery novel, and her writing style often mingles the present, the distant past, and then randomly introduces new characters, all in the same paragraph, (repeatedly) throughout the book. The story only started picking up around Chapter 50 until the end (they are very short chapters). I got the impression that as a first time writer, the first chapter was poured over for detail and getting published, however the rest of the book was hastily put together and almost an afterthought. I almost abandoned reading it, but wanted to find out who the author decided the killer was, and even that wasn't satisfying.