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A review by hahildebrand
IQ by Joe Ide
4.0
This is an enjoyable read, one I'm glad I won a review copy of from Goodreads. Young Sherlock in LA, essentially, but more fun and effective than that makes it sound.
A few things rankled: the brother's saintliness (admittedly from the main character's interior perspective, but still, no one thinks a sibling they have lived with is perfect); a minor character described as using fancy words wrongly, which is a nice image, but we subsequently get several pages of this dialogue at a key moment, which I think might be meant to be funny but is actually annoying; and the very fact that this is marketed as the first in a series, and leaves a prominent element dangling for future installments. I'm not a fan of books that purport themselves to be the first in a new series - I'd rather get a decent standalone story and then be delighted to find that a sequel is on its way. That's irrational, right? Books have been serialised since before Dickens got into it. Still.
Overall I'd say this is a solid 3.5, and despite what I've said above I'd be very happy to read the next chapter of IQ's story. A section in here which condenses Isaiah's super-detective origins into just a few pages is worth the price of entry alone.
A few things rankled: the
Spoiler
deadOverall I'd say this is a solid 3.5, and despite what I've said above I'd be very happy to read the next chapter of IQ's story. A section in here which condenses Isaiah's super-detective origins into just a few pages is worth the price of entry alone.