Reviews with content warning for Suicidal thoughts - The Thursday Murder Club

This was so fun and really engaging. The characters are so wonderfully built up and the plot was twisty without ever being hard to follow (which is especially appreciated since I was listening to the audiobook). I will say, there were chapters where the narration, though third person, was floating amongst several characters and those didn’t always work for me. I much preferred when it was a close third person or else the chapters from Joyce’s perspective, which were probably my favorite.

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mari_books's review against another edition

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emotional funny hopeful lighthearted mysterious sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

4.0

On its face the book is a fast paced almost beach read style mystery with a lovely and curious team of elderly detectives. There are lots of elements of mystery and emotional life/ death/ love/ family sentimental moments. Solidly 4 stars. Dinging one star for how anticlimactic the ending was and I think in general the author introduced too many characters it was kind of unneeded and hard to keep track of

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azrah786's review against another edition

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slow-paced

3.5

CW: violence, murder, suicide, death, grief, dementia, alcohol
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My thoughts and feelings on this are pretty much like those that I have for The House of Games..

The people/characters are a fun bunch but it's overall too relaxed for my taste. Though it kept me intrigued enough for answers to stick around until the end.

Final Rating - 3.5/5 Stars

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emilymhb's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional funny mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

I really did love this book, to the point where mysteries have earned a place in the five stars reads. This novel took me one or two tries to get into, but when I was finally in the right mood, I absolutely devoured it. The author’s take on a Marple-like trope of the elderly juxtaposing retired life with solving crime was fresh and unique. The diversity of the characters and their backgrounds made them feel like real people you could see in your regular British retirement village. I especially loved Joyce and Ibrahim, who mellowed out the antagonistic and energy of Elizabeth and Ron. They really work together, as do all of the other characters, but DI de Freitas and her unlikely companion (friend?) Chris deserve special mention. Balancing tragedy with joy, dread with relief, and tension with levity, I was impressed by how this book blew me away in just ~350 pages.

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evanmcomer's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional funny lighthearted mysterious reflective fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

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florina's review

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dark funny mysterious relaxing medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

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therobinjoyce's review against another edition

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lighthearted reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

1.25

Again, I felt like one of the last people on bookstagram to read this book and after all the hype I’d heard about it, I was expecting amazing things from The Thursday Murder Club. Unfortunately, I think the hype for this novel was very unprecedented and encouraged mainly by the fame of Richard Osman.

The book was initially hard to get into with the ever-shifting POVs and slow pacing but after a while, I could see a pattern emerging and it was a little simpler to follow each different narrator. But even then, the story was very long-winded and dragged on far too long.

Each chapter was rather short, which suited me well, but it would take roughly 10 pages of narration to finally read one sentence of information that was pertinent to the plot.

The characters were an unlikely and unusual bunch and could have been written so well but, alas, they all felt rather vanilla and boring to me and I could not connect with any of them. Donna was the only one I didn’t mind reading about but she had far too little “screen time” to keep me interested in the book.

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