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A review by kaeritha
The Opening Night Murder by Anne Rutherford
2.0
The author writes well and interestingly. But. This book desperately needed a better editor.
For a book entitled "The Opening Night Murder" the story thus far has had next to nothing to do with opening nights OR murder. The prologue describes the titular opening night murder. And that's it. No more, nada, zip, zero.
Two sentences into Chapter 1, I had to flip back to the prologue and make sure that this was, in fact, the same main character that was in the prologue. It was so I went back to Ch. 1 and kept reading. I wasn't sure if the story had jumped forward or back in time and was unsure for several more pages. Then it became apparent that the author had jumped back quite a number of years and we were getting character backstory.
It was interesting and well written and fooled me into thinking it was actually relevant to the plot. I'm at Chapter 7 now and 30% of the way through the book and we have *finally* almost caught up with the prologue. Though at the rate this book is going it'll be several more chapters yet. And I have yet to have read anything that would make the 6 chapters of backstory relevant in any way to the plot. Of course, that's probably because there hasn't BEEN any plot for the entire book up to this point.
I fully intend to finish this. Like I mentioned at the beginning, the author writes well and the backstory is interesting, just completely unnecessary and, in my opinion, betrays the author's promise to the reader of delivering a murder mystery.
For a book entitled "The Opening Night Murder" the story thus far has had next to nothing to do with opening nights OR murder. The prologue describes the titular opening night murder. And that's it. No more, nada, zip, zero.
Two sentences into Chapter 1, I had to flip back to the prologue and make sure that this was, in fact, the same main character that was in the prologue. It was so I went back to Ch. 1 and kept reading. I wasn't sure if the story had jumped forward or back in time and was unsure for several more pages. Then it became apparent that the author had jumped back quite a number of years and we were getting character backstory.
It was interesting and well written and fooled me into thinking it was actually relevant to the plot. I'm at Chapter 7 now and 30% of the way through the book and we have *finally* almost caught up with the prologue. Though at the rate this book is going it'll be several more chapters yet. And I have yet to have read anything that would make the 6 chapters of backstory relevant in any way to the plot. Of course, that's probably because there hasn't BEEN any plot for the entire book up to this point.
I fully intend to finish this. Like I mentioned at the beginning, the author writes well and the backstory is interesting, just completely unnecessary and, in my opinion, betrays the author's promise to the reader of delivering a murder mystery.