Reviews tagging 'Murder'

The Appeal by Janice Hallett

79 reviews

ashley_turch's review against another edition

challenging mysterious medium-paced

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

4.0

Formatting is interesting and fun. It takes a minute to get used to but is a nice change of pace. Makes it fun to annotate and highlight, but I found myself saying often “ok people don’t actually e-mail like that.”

Personally was disappointed in the ending. It didn’t feel realistic to me. Maybe the format didn’t allow me to fully picture the characters being capable of these things —

Spoiler

the murder, that is. I definitely caught the other illegal things happening. 

Would have liked a closer look into Issy’s mental illness issues. Plus why did Martin treat James like such shit? Left with some questions , but maybe that’s the point?

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Infidelity, Pregnancy, Mental illness, Child death, Murder, Terminal illness, Child abuse, and Cancer

Moderate: Medical trauma, Suicide, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Infertility, Sexual assault, and Violence

Besides murder, most of the content is not super descriptive due to the nature of the book’s letter format. SA is discussed as something that happened in the past. Not graphic. Someone marked animal death/cruelty for this, but as someone who can never stomach that type of content, it ended up being totally fine. Calling it animal death was a stretch. (Explaining below - no major spoilers but hiding just in case)

Spoiler

The family dog has a foreign body obstruction surgery while being dogsat. The owner says to the sitter that if the surgery is more than $100 to just put the dog down. Messed up, yes, but doesn’t affect anyone. The surgery was paid for by a family member and the dog recovered swimmingly. He wasn’t mentioned again after this and seemed to be a happy boy from there on out.

bek_p87's review against another edition

challenging mysterious tense slow-paced

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

4.25

I thoroughly enjoyed this novel. I loved the epistolary format, and the way we got to know the characters well in advance of finding out who the murder victim even was. Ordinarily I'd be frustrated by a murder mystery where you don't even find out who the victim is, let alone how they died, until more than halfway through the book, but the slow unravelling of the mysteries through texts and emails kept me engaged. I picked up on some of the twists, but most of them were so well-executed that I didn't even guess at their full extent. Highly recommend!

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Mental illness and Gaslighting

Minor: Murder

dilani's review against another edition

mysterious tense medium-paced

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

3.0

A unique take on a mystery involving a wealthy family and their amateur theatre group. A sick 2-year-old, Poppy, needs a new type of medicine to battle her rare brain cancer. A new kind of medicine means it won’t be cheap. Luckily, her family creates an appeal to raise the necessary funds, but there’s something more sinister behind it all. 

First time reading a full novel comprised of emails, text, and articles. There were a lot of people involved which made it hard to keep track of. I didn’t even know how to map out my theories, but I still enjoyed it. 🎭💉

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Cancer, Murder, and Terminal illness

Moderate: Addiction, Infidelity, Child abuse, and Child death

Minor: Mental illness

nickileal's review against another edition

slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No

3.5

Very slow start especially being introduced to such a long list of characters. Story doesn’t start to develop until the last quarter where it moves fast and swift but still puzzling bc it glosses over certain concerns. 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Cancer, Suicide, and Murder

stepnic's review against another edition

dark emotional funny mysterious tense medium-paced

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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Cancer

Moderate: Addiction, Alcoholism, Chronic illness, Death, Mental illness, Murder, Alcohol, Bullying, Classism, Drug abuse, Gaslighting, Grief, Physical abuse, Pregnancy, Toxic friendship, and Violence

Minor: Sexual assault, Rape, Child abuse, Child death, War, Suicide, Infidelity, Infertility, and Cursing

kshertz's review against another edition

dark mysterious medium-paced

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

4.5

This is a great read! It kept me reading, I was very intrigued. I couldn’t wait to see how it all unfolded. I couldn’t guess who it was and don’t think it’s guessable. There’s a ton of twists and turns. The only reason it’s not a 5 star rating is because it started to feel like twists for no reason and over the top at one point. The ending didn’t totally feel like the vindication I was going for. But still super satisfying and intriguing and I couldn’t put it down. 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Child death, Gaslighting, Mental illness, Infidelity, Murder, Physical abuse, Toxic friendship, Toxic relationship, Medical content, Child abuse, Death, and Violence

gillianengelbrecht's review against another edition

mysterious tense slow-paced

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

4.5

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Infertility, Sexual assault, Cancer, Murder, Terminal illness, Medical content, and Infidelity

Minor: Suicide, Medical trauma, Toxic friendship, Miscarriage, Pregnancy, and Bullying

amyvl93's review against another edition

lighthearted mysterious 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

3.0

 I LOVE an epistolary novel so was very excited to read The Appeal a crime/mystery novel told via emails and text message exchanges that have been handed to two trainee lawyers.

The actual plot centres in a small British town, with an influential amdram society's production of All My Sons and a charity fundraiser for a young girl with cancer to get expensive overseas treatment - all of which are complicated by the arrival of a young couple who have been nursing in Africa.

Whilst a cosy mystery focusing on an wealthy influential family and a bunch of hangers-on isn't anything new, I was really engaged with this novel in both working out the crimes and the who did it - whilst I did guess some of what was revealed, I didn't figure it all out, and it was fun to have this be part of the narrative.

There were times when it was difficult to always keep track of timescales (probably because I wasn't taking detailed notes) and not all the characters felt as real or developed as others, but this was a fun read, and I'd definitely look to Hallett for more like this. 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Cancer and Murder

Minor: Mental illness and Sexual assault

zosiablue's review against another edition

funny mysterious tense fast-paced

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

4.0

SO FUN. I love an epistolary novel, I really do. Super clever & engaging murder mystery told through emails and texts, treated sort of like a game for the reader. Plus, a very accurate depiction of a community theater group. Definitely got overlong and complicated, but the format was like candy. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Cancer, Infidelity, and Toxic friendship

Moderate: Bullying, War, Murder, Mental illness, and Child abuse

Minor: Infertility

atalea's review against another edition

dark mysterious fast-paced

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

2.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Cancer, Toxic friendship, and Mental illness

Moderate: Bullying, Murder, Infidelity, Toxic relationship, and Child abuse

Minor: Child death, Excrement, Pregnancy, Vomit, Rape, Addiction, Domestic abuse, Alcoholism, Infertility, and War