Reviews

All the Beautiful Lies by Peter Swanson

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jaee_s's review against another edition

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dark mysterious fast-paced

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

3.0

wombat_88's review

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dark mysterious reflective tense slow-paced

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

3.0

chazumsiow's review against another edition

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2.0

This was an interesting story with some twists, the characters were interesting and all as messed up as each other. I usually love Peter Swanson’s books but I’ve got to admit that this one felt a bit like a chore to read compared to the others. It was quite jarring and didn’t flow as well as his other books and I had to push to keep reading. Maybe there was just too much of it? I did like it but wouldn’t recommend unless you are a fan of his work and want to read them all.

45degreeangel's review against another edition

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2.0

Definitely his weakest.

louandlife's review against another edition

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2.0

TRIGGER WARNINGS: Rape / Taboo relationship of Step parent + step child

*2.5 stars*

I picked this book up on a whim. I recently discovered that my local library has like two online libraries, when I've only been using one. The second library has like all the books that I could ever want to read in both audiobook and ebook formats so I got really excited. After I enjoyed reading [b:Eight Perfect Murders|52225186|Eight Perfect Murders|Peter Swanson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1562582942l/52225186._SX50_SY75_.jpg|71665754], I decided to pick up this audiobook as it was short (8 hours long), and I knew that I could finish it in a day because I wanted to have a fresh slate for May/Asianreadathon. I am lowkey regretting that decision because I didn't particularly enjoy this book and I mainly read it because I wanted to finish it. I would literally count down the chapters until I finished this book...

The thing that I disliked about this was the entire world and the characters. I feel almost tainted from having read this book. I appreciate the writing craft, and the fact that the author had made me feel a great sense of revulsion towards this book, but at the end of the day I didn't enjoy reading this book. It wasn't a pleasurable read for me. I ended up finishing it because I wanted to know what will happen next, but also because I wanted to finish it. Having such morally grey characters doing morally grey or wrong things throughout the book made me not like anybody. I wasn't emotionally invested in any of the characters. The plot also was incredibly slow, especially because we are following two different timelines and different characters.

I would not recommend this book. I would recommend other thrillers/mysteries and [b:Eight Perfect Murders|52225186|Eight Perfect Murders|Peter Swanson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1562582942l/52225186._SX50_SY75_.jpg|71665754] also by [a:Peter Swanson|7142445|Peter Swanson|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1506083984p2/7142445.jpg] instead.

star63's review

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4.0

This is the first Swanson book I’ve read but it won’t be the last. Many twists and turns in the plot and events that I didn’t see coming. No spoilers here: mystery novel that centers on really inappropriate relationships between step parent/kids, murder(s), plot twists and, my favorite, then and now chapters which really kept me guessing.