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A review by novelfables
The Family Game by Catherine Steadman
4.0
I ordered this from BOTM to try new genres outside of my comfort zone of SFF.
My first impression was that I love the grandiose scenes Catherine Steadman painted of the seasonal atmosphere and the larger-than-life riches of our protagonist’s mysterious in-laws. This held true the entire way through.
I quickly became invested in our protagonist Harry and her significant life events unfolding in the first few chapters. I was rooting for her even when she became somewhat unlikeable with her persistent intrusive thoughts.
The mystery of the family unfolding was interesting, but somewhere around 50%, I became quite bored following our protagonist around playing detective. I just didn’t care enough to listen to the researched, but hugely speculative information dump found on Google; the pacing was just off for me compared to the rest of the story, and it felt a bit disjointed. At this point, I started skimming and longing for the more vivid scenes I had been lured with from the beginning. Thankfully it picked back up, and I had fun with the rest of the story!
I didn’t see that twist coming!
If we had swapped the Google detective info dump pages out for more Holiday/Christmas gatherings at the in-laws, it would have been perfect five stars for me personally! I’ll give this a four since I really enjoyed myself with this one, and it was a fun, fast read to start off the holiday season!
My first impression was that I love the grandiose scenes Catherine Steadman painted of the seasonal atmosphere and the larger-than-life riches of our protagonist’s mysterious in-laws. This held true the entire way through.
I quickly became invested in our protagonist Harry and her significant life events unfolding in the first few chapters. I was rooting for her even when she became somewhat unlikeable with her persistent intrusive thoughts.
The mystery of the family unfolding was interesting, but somewhere around 50%, I became quite bored following our protagonist around playing detective. I just didn’t care enough to listen to the researched, but hugely speculative information dump found on Google; the pacing was just off for me compared to the rest of the story, and it felt a bit disjointed. At this point, I started skimming and longing for the more vivid scenes I had been lured with from the beginning. Thankfully it picked back up, and I had fun with the rest of the story!
I didn’t see that twist coming!
If we had swapped the Google detective info dump pages out for more Holiday/Christmas gatherings at the in-laws, it would have been perfect five stars for me personally! I’ll give this a four since I really enjoyed myself with this one, and it was a fun, fast read to start off the holiday season!