Kati

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC!

5 sparkly stars! It's always great when you finish a book and feel the need to silently stare at a wall for 10 minutes after because you don't know what to do with yourself now.

There's some gorgeous writing in this and an infuriating countdown. What more do you want?

This is a favourite of the year. Stuart Turton remains one of my all-time favourite authors. He made me enjoy an environmental dystopia that has hints of climate scifi, a subgenre I usually don't like at all!

I can't say much about this book since I believe the less you know about this author's novels, the more fun you'll have. What I will say is that, although The Last Murder at the End of the World shares some characteristics with his previous books—namely, that they are all mysteries featuring a small number of core characters who are surrounded by a larger cast and they all have lengthy titles—it is also, once again, a completely different book compared to the other things Stuart Turton has written. In the same way that The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle and The Devil and the Dark Water are very different books!

Basically, if you love how Stuart Turton builds his stories, you won't be disappointed. If what he does is not your cup of tea, then I'm not sure this will work for you.

Personally, I can't wait for his next book! And with all due respect, please write faster, sir.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC!

1 star. What a struggle to get through. Messy teen drama in a supposedly adult thriller package.

Every single character sounds and acts like a whiny teenager from a mediocre YA novel. Be that the attendees of the writing retreat, who are in their mid-twenties to early thirties or the famous author host, who is in her mid-fifties. Every one of them was annoying to no end. Also, the characters' ages make no sense, considering their backstories. Several of them can't be the age the book tells us they are, unless they are all secretly time travellers.

All of the dialogue is weird, awkward and unnatural. Which is also true for the random sex dreams that are thrown into the mix and the odd descriptions of breasts and nipples. And every single item of clothing is described in tedious detail. The characters also seem to think that the name Poppy is the most exotic and uncommon name that they have ever encountered... another example of the strange writing choices. And let's not even talk about the historical fiction novel that one character is writing and the very many current-day expressions used in that book-within-a-book.

The blurb-promised snow storm doesn't occur until more than halfway through. There is almost no plot and what little there is, makes no sense, is incredibly obvious and just feels like messy teen drama most of the time. The first half of the book reads like a weird attempt at a gothic novel, only to turn into a strange attempt at horror in the second. Neither work.

I was so excited to read this book, but unfortunately, I only ended up being relieved that it was finally over by the end.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC!

A high 4 stars. Overall, a really amazing and fun time!

This is such a great collection! So many very typical Miss Marple stories! From an assortment of female mystery, crime and thriller writers who are taking a stab at writing a Miss Marple story.

The stories are all versions of very classic mystery tropes and plots. Most of the set-ups could easily be found in a Christie. It's brilliant.
Because many of the stories just seem so familiar, this anthology feels very cosy, even if the topics of the mysteries obviously aren't. Familiar and cosy in the best way!

Many of the stories use Raymond, Marple's nephew, as the reason for Miss Marple to show up in certain places! It's kind of hilarious.

I do wish more stories had been set between the wars and not so many in the 60s/70s. But that's just a personal preference.
Also, some authors, especially the American ones, didn't get the tone and language quite right. Their stories just felt off to me. They didn't fit into a Miss Marple anthology or feel like Miss Marple stories. But most of those were still fun, little mysteries nonetheless!

Most stories were just so much fun to read!

Individual ratings of the short stories:

Evil in Small Places by Lucy Foley - 4 stars
(Fun. And typically Miss Marple!)

The Second Murder at the Vicarage by Val McDermid - 4 stars
(Nicely written and a good time! Typical St Mary Mead!)

Miss Marple Takes Manhattan by Alyssa Cole - 2 stars
(This just felt wrong for a Marple story. The writing and setting were off and it was a bit boring.)

The Unravelling by Natalie Haynes - 4 stars
(Fun! Typical murder mystery! And I liked the writing.)

Miss Marple's Christmas by Ruth Ware - 5 stars
(Personal favourite! Felt the most like a GAD mystery!)

The Open Mind by Naomi Alderman - 3.5 stars
(Great, just slightly the wrong tone for a Marple story. Has too many, different things happening for a short story. Would make a great full-length novel. With a sleuth who isn't Miss Marple.)

The Jade Empress by Jean Kwok - 2 stars
(Just didn't work. Felt more like a possible Poirot setting than a Marple one. No idea when this was set, which didn't help the historical elements. I didn't enjoy the writing style. Miss Marple didn't read like Miss Marple.)

A Deadly Wedding Day by Dreda Say Mitchell - 3 stars
(Fun mystery. But not Marple-y enough. Too much internal dialogue and a second sleuth who isn't just “the plucky, but slightly clueless, helper”. Should have been its own book, without Miss Marple!)

Murder at the Villa Rosa by Elly Griffiths - 5 stars
(Third favourite. Really great version of a 1st person POV in a GAD-style mystery!)

The Murdering Sort by Karen M. McManus - 3 stars
(Really good mystery. But not a Marple story. Writing and setting felt slightly wrong. Was like expecting “Phryne Fisher” but ending up with a teenage version of “Ms Fisher's Modern Murder Mysteries”.)

The Mystery of the Acid Soil by Kate Mosse - 4 stars
(A lot of fun and a very typical Miss Marple story with nice writing!)

The Disappearance by Leigh Bardugo - 5 stars
(Second favourite. Writing was great and very funny. Felt like a classic mystery. Amazing version of a St Mary Mead story.)

Thanks to NetGalley for the Audiobook ARC!

2 stars. This one sadly wasn't the book for me, even though I had been looking forward to reading it. I was mostly bored. And struggled to make it to the end.

The writing isn't great. Very simplistic and clunky. It made the narration incredibly dull. And the word choices were very repetitive. There was so much clenching! Fists, jaws, teeth, stomachs. No body part was safe!

There was also a lot of info-dumping at the start, all very boring and messy. It didn't make the world feel rounded or interesting. The characters felt very flat, too. They were mostly moody and whiny and overall annoying to read about. Their internal thoughts and the dialogue between them started to be repetitive after only a few chapters. The seemingly interesting detail of the characters' bond with wolves was just that, a mostly unimportant detail.

The promised enemies to lovers part of this story was just them being snippy with each other, for no good reason. They had zero chemistry. And while this is an adult book, the characters' motivations felt very YA.

It was all just very flat and bland and didn't make much sense.

There also seem to be two different audiobook versions. The audio-ARC I listened to was narrated by Devon Sorvari and while it wasn't bad, it was slightly monotonous at times. After listening to a sample, I think I would have preferred the other one, narrated by Saffron Coomber, more.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC!

1 star. I didn't enjoy this book at all and parts of it made me angry. Not the fun, popcorn thriller I was expecting to read. Very unpleasant.

I hated how the thematic content was incorporated into the story and repeated over and over again. Family, parents and children, pregnancies, rape and victim blaming. None of these were well handled and I was surprised that this was even what the book was about! The blurb gave the impression of a story about three couples and their friendships. This is not that book. A strange importance was put upon blood relations and children being a vital part of a complete and happy life. I didn't enjoy that at all. And everyone had either tragically lost their parents or couldn't connect with them. Everyone.

I also hated all of the characters and disliked spending time with them. They were all miserable. The gender dynamics weren't great either, with all the men obsessed with work and all the women only caring about family and children. And those are the only character traits they possess.

A large part of the book deals with the results of DNA testing kits. Which isn't even hinted at in the description. Not a word about ancestry research, even though it is a topic that's brought up in the very first chapter!

On top of all of that, it takes forever for anything to happen once they've reached the cabin. Some characters are off on their own for large sections of the book and because they don't have a POV, they disappear until they are needed again for the story to progress. While other characters, whose POVs we are reading from, are completely inconsequential to the story. It's incredibly clunky and the book overall is very boring for a thriller. And so repetitive!

This is the second book by the author that I have read (“Confessions on the 7:45” being the other and 4 stars) and both have a strange subtext of disliking social media and technology without reason. It's very odd.

I had been looking forward to reading this book a lot, but was sadly very disappointed.