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A review by bigpaw
Thirty Days of Darkness by Jenny Lund Madsen
2.5
I didn't mean to read two mystery/thrillers with a vague theme of "sell-out crime author vs pretentious literary author" back-to-back like this, but things just happen sometimes! Anyway. I am always drawn to books about authors, but this didn't really work for me. A book isn't "meta" just because it's about an author writing a crime book while investigating a crime. The blurb says this book is the first in a new series, but I can't find much in this worth making a series about. Hannah is not a compelling enough protagonist for me to want to read a series about her, and the plot here wasn't interesting enough in its own for me to feel like "wow, can't wait to see what other twisty plots this author comes up with!"
I did really love the remote Icelandic setting and how quickly the darkness comes on each day. Loved how in this tiny town, everyone has history and knows each other.
I'm still trying to figure out for me personally, why sometimes an "unlikeable" protagonist works well and sometimes it doesn't. I guess it comes down to whether I find them to be a compelling narrative voice--but of course, that's subjective, and I still don't know what factors make someone compelling or nor. All I know is, Hannah absolutely was not. Her immaturity (despite being a 45 year old established author who has published several beloved novels and supposedly has a great understanding of ~the human condition~ or whatever) grated on me from the beginning, and although her character absolutely grew throughout the book, that cynical teenage edge never fully left her. That scene near the beginning with her smoking near the schoolchildren had me rolling my eyes so hard it hurt. And her "investigation" style...having your narrator constantly thinking to herself "wow that was a stupid question" or "wow why did I do something so stupid" immediately after doing something doesn't actually make up for her making those stupid choices in the first place. It doesn't make her look self-aware, it just makes her look like she's stumbling through life, and makes me wonder why everyone else seems to be going along with it.
I did really love the remote Icelandic setting and how quickly the darkness comes on each day. Loved how in this tiny town, everyone has history and knows each other.
I'm still trying to figure out for me personally, why sometimes an "unlikeable" protagonist works well and sometimes it doesn't. I guess it comes down to whether I find them to be a compelling narrative voice--but of course, that's subjective, and I still don't know what factors make someone compelling or nor. All I know is, Hannah absolutely was not. Her immaturity (despite being a 45 year old established author who has published several beloved novels and supposedly has a great understanding of ~the human condition~ or whatever) grated on me from the beginning, and although her character absolutely grew throughout the book, that cynical teenage edge never fully left her. That scene near the beginning with her smoking near the schoolchildren had me rolling my eyes so hard it hurt. And her "investigation" style...having your narrator constantly thinking to herself "wow that was a stupid question" or "wow why did I do something so stupid" immediately after doing something doesn't actually make up for her making those stupid choices in the first place. It doesn't make her look self-aware, it just makes her look like she's stumbling through life, and makes me wonder why everyone else seems to be going along with it.