A review by katesylvania
The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl

5.0

The Dante Club is a delightfully quirky book with a distinct writing style that I really enjoy. The characters are extremely fleshed out and real, as well as very relatable. I really like how the characters are not immediately responsible for solving the murders right away, as typically done in most murder mystery novels, but are instead believably entangled into the deaths due to the secrecy of their Dante Club. Additionally, the character of Nicholas Rey is very refreshing, I think his involvement in the story was done perfectly— it did not take one conversation or moment. The entire story felt truly human, without plot armor— and the ending had a delightful twist that I certainly did not expect… at all. In fact, the book threw a ton of possible suspects at me that were not the murderer. While some sections are a bit tedious to get through— divulging from the plot a little too much before suddenly throwing the reader back into the action— it ended up making the story more real in the end. I honestly viewed this as the most well-crafted mystery I’ve read in a long time… probably ever.