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atipsybookworm 's review for:
A Test of Wills
by Charles Todd
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
This book sets itself up like a classic English mystery. Inspector Ian Rutledge, just back from WWI and carrying some serious trauma, gets sent to a tiny village to solve the murder of a beloved officer. Sounds promising: war-haunted detective, a countryside setting, shady villagers with secrets — basically, the recipe for a moody whodunnit.
But the execution? Brutal. There are so many characters that keeping track of them felt like a part-time job. Every time I thought I had a handle on who was who, another villager would pop in with their own side story, and the whole thing spun out again. Instead of layering suspense, it just made everything muddy and confusing. Half the time I wasn’t even following the plot — I was just flipping back muttering, “Wait… who is this person again?”
And the pacing? All over the place. One moment we’re crawling through pages of internal angst, the next we’re thrown into yet another conversation with yet another character I didn’t care about. It was disjointed, hard to follow, and honestly, not fun. The detective’s war trauma angle could’ve been fascinating, but it got buried under the sheer weight of names, details, and nonsense filler.
By the time I got to the end, I didn’t even care about the “big reveal” — I was just relieved it was done. The only real mystery here was why I kept torturing myself by finishing it. Finding it in a Little Free Library suddenly made perfect sense: someone else had the same experience and bailed, leaving it behind like a cursed object.
If you want a mystery, there are a thousand better ones out there.
But the execution? Brutal. There are so many characters that keeping track of them felt like a part-time job. Every time I thought I had a handle on who was who, another villager would pop in with their own side story, and the whole thing spun out again. Instead of layering suspense, it just made everything muddy and confusing. Half the time I wasn’t even following the plot — I was just flipping back muttering, “Wait… who is this person again?”
And the pacing? All over the place. One moment we’re crawling through pages of internal angst, the next we’re thrown into yet another conversation with yet another character I didn’t care about. It was disjointed, hard to follow, and honestly, not fun. The detective’s war trauma angle could’ve been fascinating, but it got buried under the sheer weight of names, details, and nonsense filler.
By the time I got to the end, I didn’t even care about the “big reveal” — I was just relieved it was done. The only real mystery here was why I kept torturing myself by finishing it. Finding it in a Little Free Library suddenly made perfect sense: someone else had the same experience and bailed, leaving it behind like a cursed object.
If you want a mystery, there are a thousand better ones out there.