22.04.25
As I said about the prequel to this book, Klune does good work but it doesn't always pay off. This was all over the place in terms of tone, plot and character, lurching from one thing to another - and it did such a poor job of establishing sympathy that I ended up wondering what made the goodies so sure they were good.
06.02.25
What is it with all the telling and not showing in family dramas? This could have been a fascinating insight into an unfamiliar world, but it - the characters, the plot, the dialogue - felt cold and flat because everything was exposition. It really needed another edit - but would make a good TV show.
07.07.24
The fact that the author had to write a really quite long essay at the end to 'explain' things is not a good sign. She insists, for example, that it wasn't that easy for the narrator to just leave town - but it was - it just wouldn't have helped the plot. It really all came down to none of the characters behaving convincingly for their time or place or doing anything an actual person might do. On the plus side, it's not quite as bad as that Crawdads nonsense, even if it was going for its tone - and audience.
49%
My excuse is that I wanted something easy to read while I had the flu and this had a nice cover. Of course, I should know that the cover is not the way to judge a book - in this case, I judge it - yet again! - on the Edwardian characters speaking like modern Americans. Nobody would have used that vocabulary, and clearly the author knows nothing about how Cambridge colleges work. Yes, it's fantasy, but jarring inaccuracies ruin the immersion. Again, I ask, why didn't an editor pick up on any of this? So that irritated me even without the very familiar storyline and unsympathetic characters behaving remarkably irrationally for scientists.
29.01.23
I think this was TJR's last novel before she found herself a niche in fake celebrity memoirs. Those are better. Perhaps it's the more focused characters in the later books - the two men in this seemed to be exactly the same so no wonder the narrator struggled to choose between them. And I have no idea what they saw in her. Unsurprisingly, that made the whole premise a little rocky.
30.07.22
I heard Lucy Foley being interviewed recently - she sounded nice. This book, though, was like a low-budget British TV drama that couldn't afford the right cast or production team. If a story's main selling point is not revealing who has been murdered until 90% of the way through, then perhaps it's not a very strong story in the first place.
24.07.22
This was TJR before she hit her stride with fictional celebrity memoirs and it's not good. It's hard to care about any of the self-centred protagonists. It's hard to care about what happens to them. It's certainly hard to care, or even read, about their fluffy thoughts on love and fate.
49%
I didn't get the point of this novel. More 'rich people drama' that shed no new light on anything. And there were so many continuity errors and 'But wait!' moments - not to mention the silly ending - that there was no chance of getting sucked into the story, such as it was.
06.06.22
Weird, maybe, convoluted, definitely, but impossible? Well, given I couldn't understand what the protagonists saw in each other, or why they did what they did, or why it resolved so awkwardly, then yes.
Also: 'pointless pandemic-themed epilogue' warning. Why did the publisher evidently insist on this 'realistic' afterthought when the whole point of the story is that it's 'impossible'?
05.02.22
I don't mind an occasional dive into the lives of the 0.1% and this was a fairly intelligent take on the old celebrity story. It was just a shame it lacked a plot and relatable characters.
