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sleepydoe 's review for:
Impossible Causes
by Julie Mayhew
Firstly, a huge thanks to Bloomsbury India for the review copy in exchange of an honest review. All opinions are my own! Book was released on 17th October, 2019,so you go check it out if it intrigues you!
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The story takes place on a fictional island called Lark that's off the coast of England where people live a simple, primitive lifestyle. They've got one school, one store, one church. And they're all happy. Supposedly, anyway. It begins with a murder, an event unheard of the island. And as the mystrey of the killer unravels, so does the past which led to this murder in a parallel narrative, unearthing all the buried secrets of the island.
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This book had a great concept, to start with. It was written exceptionally well-each sentence laced with the deliberate earthiness that lender to the atmosphere it was trying to create. And the character dynamics were so well done, too! Once you got into the novel, you really couldn't stop reading. Even though it was slow, it held your attention! And I can totally see how this book can be a favorite for so many others.
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However, for me, I felt like the writing was too dense to get through in the beginning of the book. I had to put it down after the first 50 pages back in October because I just couldn't read it. I was only able to get through when I picked it up now, after 3 months. This, to me, says that that beginning could've been edited down heavily. That goes for a lot of parts in the book. While they all lended to the atmosphere, they took from immersion in places because of their bulkiness and that just wasn't a tradeoff that was worth in, in my opinion.
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I liked the partitioning of the chapters, the parts labeled not in word, but with a card from the tarot deck-that was so creepy! The "twist" in the book, however, was no twist at all.It was something anyone could've predicted withing the first 100 pages of the book. And that really diminished my experience of reading because every *culty* thing that happened seemed reduced because I had figured out the "secret". And... I don't know.. It didn't seem like the book was doing anything new with it either. So that was really disappointing. All in all, not a bad read. But the 410 pages is a bit much, so I wouldn't recommend it unless you're alright with reading heavy books like that when there's nothing too mysterious about them!
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
The story takes place on a fictional island called Lark that's off the coast of England where people live a simple, primitive lifestyle. They've got one school, one store, one church. And they're all happy. Supposedly, anyway. It begins with a murder, an event unheard of the island. And as the mystrey of the killer unravels, so does the past which led to this murder in a parallel narrative, unearthing all the buried secrets of the island.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
This book had a great concept, to start with. It was written exceptionally well-each sentence laced with the deliberate earthiness that lender to the atmosphere it was trying to create. And the character dynamics were so well done, too! Once you got into the novel, you really couldn't stop reading. Even though it was slow, it held your attention! And I can totally see how this book can be a favorite for so many others.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
However, for me, I felt like the writing was too dense to get through in the beginning of the book. I had to put it down after the first 50 pages back in October because I just couldn't read it. I was only able to get through when I picked it up now, after 3 months. This, to me, says that that beginning could've been edited down heavily. That goes for a lot of parts in the book. While they all lended to the atmosphere, they took from immersion in places because of their bulkiness and that just wasn't a tradeoff that was worth in, in my opinion.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
I liked the partitioning of the chapters, the parts labeled not in word, but with a card from the tarot deck-that was so creepy! The "twist" in the book, however, was no twist at all.It was something anyone could've predicted withing the first 100 pages of the book. And that really diminished my experience of reading because every *culty* thing that happened seemed reduced because I had figured out the "secret". And... I don't know.. It didn't seem like the book was doing anything new with it either. So that was really disappointing. All in all, not a bad read. But the 410 pages is a bit much, so I wouldn't recommend it unless you're alright with reading heavy books like that when there's nothing too mysterious about them!