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hazel_alexandra 's review for:
Heresy
by S.J. Parris
Between Giordano Bruno and the antagonists I can't tell who is more incompetent. I'm surprised Bruno didn't just go around asking people if they were the murderer, considering nobody in this story seemed to grasp the concept of actually lying, and Bruno never seems to put two and two together from his constant asking questions about every single thing to anyone he sees and how that might seem suspicious. The actual murder mystery felt very lacklustre as a plot - maybe because there was no real action, as we tended to skip that out of a belief that the reader would rather sit through pages of quite minor conversations. I kind of wished we had more of Bruno being built up in the plot from the fascinating historical figure instead of "some guy this stuff happens to".
I just didn't care about the secret undercover Catholics or whatever was honestly going on. I clocked out after Sophia came by to deliver her second? third? set of vague warnings and be ogled at by the main character, because she's so "not like other girls", she studies too! I'm not honestly sure how close this is to the real historical figure(s), but tbh at no point reading this was I ever really convinced this guy was an Italian ex-monk who had radical beliefs that saw him kicked out of the Church, and that we were in Elizabethan England (or even specifically Oxford.)
I can't rightly say this was bad because it wasn't - the writing was fine and tonally it was all sound. The plot just felt so slow and boring that I was really struggling to make it through this with any semblance of it sticking in my mind and none of the characters were compelling.
I just didn't care about the secret undercover Catholics or whatever was honestly going on. I clocked out after Sophia came by to deliver her second? third? set of vague warnings and be ogled at by the main character, because she's so "not like other girls", she studies too! I'm not honestly sure how close this is to the real historical figure(s), but tbh at no point reading this was I ever really convinced this guy was an Italian ex-monk who had radical beliefs that saw him kicked out of the Church, and that we were in Elizabethan England (or even specifically Oxford.)
I can't rightly say this was bad because it wasn't - the writing was fine and tonally it was all sound. The plot just felt so slow and boring that I was really struggling to make it through this with any semblance of it sticking in my mind and none of the characters were compelling.