thereadingmum's reviews
776 reviews

Funny but not funny enough. A bit too arduous to read at first with the odd language. The ending is too unsatisfactory.

I don't like stories where I can see frustrating hardship coming. The main character and her friend were also starting to annoy me. 

This is the second time I've read this and I think it's aged well with me because I increased my rating from 4 to 5 stars.

This was not only Christie's first Poirot novel but it was her first ever novel. You can tell she is setting Poirot's character up with all his little quirks, which obviously charmed her at first then grated on her about halfway through the series until the last few where she came to terms with his popularity and begrudgingly gave him his due. I honestly love Poirot. I love all his idiosyncracies or maybe I just relate to them? 🤔

My second reading took place on holiday and perhaps this helped me to enjoy it more. It had all the hallmarks of a cosy murder mystery, big house, dodgy family, telltale signs leading up to the murder of the obvious victim. Then the investigation began. We are also introduced to Inspector Japp, Poirot's helpmeet at Scotland Yard and Arthur Hastings, his spunkier, but no less clueless, Watson. Their dynamic is at times comic, but it works and while Hastings makes many wrong deductions, he is a good counterpoint to Poirot's enigmatic arrogant intelligence. 

And I loved the ending. It was unexpected yet completely believable and the only solution I would be happy with. 

A book I wished I'd written myself. With novellas, each phrase must be carefully crafted and indispensable and that is absolutely the case here.

It's such a simple story of young love gone wrong yet so poignant. The characters are painted in such delicate strokes, they are easily relatable even if you don't belong to the same era, country or race. 

Not everyone will love the style or the storyline, and of course, I may prove myself wrong if/when I reread this, but at the time I read it, I thought it was perfect. It's a testament to Capote's writing future that his debut novel was crafted so well. 

This is what a psychological thriller should be. It's gruesome but not grossly so. There's a lovely build to the tension and that final release of action at the end. 

Kirino's dissection of human behaviour is masterful. Just like how her characters chopped up dead bodies. Each character is wonderfully detailed and vivid. 

My only bug bear was the resolution scene at the end. When the two main characters face off then suddenly one becomes sympathetic to the other. It's like crunching on something unexpected and slightly unpleasant at the end of a delicious meal. 

I really, really, REALLY wanted to love this one. Not only is it so pretty I could die, but it's based on my favourite ballets and one of my favourite tales ever - Swan Lake. 

However, I think I built it up too much because it fell slightly flat. I loved Midnight in Everwood and while this was very similar in style, the writing wasn't quite as polished and there were a lot of cliche phrases. Also, while I appreciated that "superlative" may have been the in word at the time for their age group, it was still annoying to read so many times. 

This story is based on Swan Lake and The Great Gatsby so I suppose I was a bit naive to expect a happy ending, but it was still disappointing nonetheless. 

Overall, I enjoyed this book and I am still glad I bought it just because it is so pretty, but I wish I had gone into it with less expectations.

I'm fairly sure some of the tone has been lost in translation or else I'm just not used to it. Other than that I got inordinately annoyed with both Fumiko and Kazu. While Fumiko may be acting on her heart break and regret at having let her boyfriend go, her crazed, arrogant, obnoxious manner is really off-putting. While Kazu, clearly reluctant to let Fumiko go back in time, doesn't explain things properly to her. She does it piece-meal and gives one line then lets Fumiko go off on her tangent. The clinker was when she told Fumiko about the ghost, allows her to get cursed, is snide about it and then continues to take her time explaining. I wanted to slap Kazu. If the rest of the book continues in this vein I think I'll pop a blood vessel. 

However, clearly a lot of people have loved this book and its sequels, so I am in the itty bitty minority here. If, like me, you prize straight talking and not mucking about, I think you also may find this too hard to plow through. 

You know how you go into a book thinking you're going to get one thing, then you get it but it's so much better than you were expecting? No? I don't either except that's what happened with Around the World in 80 Days.

I've read A Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and Journey to the Centre of the Earth. Both of which I enjoyed thoroughly but have no real inclination to read again. I went into Around the World expecting the same experience and it was except I forgot how much I enjoy his writing. 

If you wanted to get into the classics but are afraid of nodding off after the first page, then I'd definitely recommend reading Verne first. The action starts within the first few pages and you would get completely sucked into Phileas Fogg's adventure. Verne's characters are good if a bit stereotypical. Fogg is such an eccentric, fussy, overly proper, seemingly unimaginative Englishman, yet I really rooted for him at the end. By contrast, Passepartout, is passionate, reactive and effusive. They are almost caricatures of an English and French man respectively.

This book works well on audio too because the language isn't too ornate and doesn't require extreme attention.