A review by evila_elf
Papillon by Henri Charrière

4.0

This started out as an excellent book. I got absorbed in the story and lost all track of time while I was reading.

But, about halfway through the book, things started to fall apart. While the story remained captivating, the writing took a bit of a turn. Several times, Papillion ruined the suspense of his own story. Something like 'And this mistake would cost me 7 more years in prison.' And he did it several times. Maybe that information would have already been known to a lot of people, but I purposely didn't look him up on the internet because I wanted to avoid 'spoilers'.

It also seemed a little convenient that everyone seemed to love him right away and go out of their way to help him. As a reader, I started to know him and connect to him less and less as time went on and I missed the personality he had at the start that made me like him.

Despite all of that, I did enjoy reading it and wish it were even longer to better expand on the huge gaps in time.