Reviews with content warning for Death - The Twyford Code

An interesting read, and a bit of rollercoaster near the end - I'm still not entirely sure what is 'fact' or 'fiction' in-universe and that's okay ☺ I had to finish the book via an e-book and that was a bit of a pity, as I would have like to flip back and forth to some of the story references that are used in the last 5th.

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felofhe's review

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adventurous challenging dark funny mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

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

3.25

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gphemsley's review

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adventurous challenging dark emotional informative inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

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

4.0

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beepbeep101's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional mysterious fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

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kylieqrada's review

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adventurous emotional lighthearted mysterious sad medium-paced

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

4.0

Janice Hallett's mixed media mysteries are so fun!! It would be such a good time for the reader to try to solve the mystery, but I am too dumb. 🤣

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nickoliver's review against another edition

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mysterious medium-paced

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

4.0

This was certainly a lot different than I could have ever imagined! I went into it very excited because I’d heard good things about it, but it was a bit of a challenge for me at first.

First of all, it mentioned at the beginning that some of the spelling was going to be wrong. The whole book consisted solely of audio files that got transcribed via some program, and they sometimes would spell words inaccurately. And I just wasn’t looking forward to that. I’ve always been a big fan of books with mixed media, which this one obviously was, but it took me a while to really make my peace with the writing.

However, it grew on me. Even though I didn’t listen to the audiobook, it helped envisioning Steven’s voice, because he had a very distinct accent - someone else could probably say what kind, but I’m not British, so I have no idea. And thanks to the phonetically accurate writing, you could actually hear his accent even in the physical book. It gave the story a bigger British feeling than it would’ve had otherwise. Which was fun.

What was weird about the writing too, though, was that it didn’t really feel realistic. The audio files were very similarly written to how an author would write a normally structured book. If a person talked into their phone to record their life, would they really talk like that? Doubtful. It was fine when Steven talked to other people, but when he just summarised what had just happened to him, it really didn’t sound authentic and was almost a bit cringey at times.

Because it was audio files, there were also details in the writing that you’d find in a transcription - for example, capitalised words for shouting, italicised words for whispering, brackets to show a pause, and things like that. It’s possible that some readers might be thrown off by that. I wasn’t bothered because I had to transcribe audio files before and was therefore familiar with the style, but I wanted to mention it nonetheless.

Next up, the story itself also took me some time to really get into it. I started out confused and uninterested in what Steve had to say. At a certain point, I started to find the story more and more intriguing. But even then, I think the plot surrounding the Twyford Code was just too sophisticated for me. All that talk about what they found out within the text went completely over my head, which made especially the parts with Lucy, a vaguely important side character, a bit confusing and stopped me from enjoying the story. It also lessened my intrigue a bit? I really wasn’t that hooked on what could be going on.

Looking back, a lot was foreshadowed. Part of that was quite tedious and off-putting in the story itself. Steven, the protagonist, often stopped telling what was currently going on and started rambling about the past and how he ended up where he ended up. In a book like this that was structured in audio files, it felt really out of place. If someone had just had to run away from some bad guys, or had an eye-opening conversation with someone, why would they just randomly talk about the past like that? It made sense in retrospect why it was in the book, but while reading it, it just annoyed me and I had to suppress the urge to just skim-read those parts. So it definitely didn’t help making the story more interesting to me in the moment.

Though I do have to say that the foreshadowing was quite brilliant. Some of it was a little bit predictable - for example,

it was obvious that Max’s name could be important, since Steven not once called him by his name in a single audio file

-, but for the most part, they were all small and trivial enough for me to overlook them.

For the majority of the book, I would’ve given it 3 stars - maybe 3.5 if I was generous. But then I got to the second part, literally forty pages away from the ending. The audio files stopped, though it was still mixed media. And now there was suddenly plot twist after plot twist. I was flabbergasted - also a bit confused for a while, but it got explained pretty well. And while the very end of the story wasn’t my favourite , the way I kept being surprised and confronted with information I did not see coming made me eventually raise my rating to 4 stars. It kind of made the more boring and confusing parts of the book worth it for me.

Overall, this wasn’t quite what I expected. The plot went over my head a bit too often for far too long, and the writing took me a while to get used to. But I liked Steven as a voice to follow - the way he talked about his son made me feel raw and ready to cry -, and the last forty pages had wonderful plot twists that I didn't see coming.

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