Reviews with content warning for Murder - Murder in the Family

Reviews tagging 'Murder'

Murder in the Family by Cara Hunter

96 reviews

kristinahreads's review against another edition

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challenging mysterious sad tense 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? It's complicated

5.0

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mynameisrebecca's review against another edition

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dark emotional tense fast-paced

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

2.5

This book tries to do the classic Agatha Christie format of a murder where everyone's a suspect. There's lots of red herrings and twists, but I was able to get close to the actual resolution pretty early on. It's written in "script" format though which really is the book's undoing - all the characters are indistinguishable, the narration and timeline becomes messy, and gets repetitive.

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bea_reads_books's review against another edition

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tense fast-paced

Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.0

Originally I expected to give this book three stars, because it seems to be trying to make a point about the way true crime media often re-traumatizes victims and crosses boundaries in the pursuit of sensationalism. However it did not do this well, and that aspect fell flat. I bumped off another half star about half way through because of the casual sprinklings of racism/copaganda and zionism throughout, but it was the last 15% of the book that really pissed me off and caused me to put it at 2 stars. The end of this book is so disgustingly ableist, makes absolutely no fucking sense, and heavily leans into the demonization of mental heath conditions/trauma. It reinforces the idea that trauma makes people violent to the point of senseless murder. I am so angry right now, the book had a really great ending all mapped out, a road it could’ve taken, and instead it did exactly the same nasty shit that true crime tv so often does (which is ironic considering the author seemed to be *trying* to make a point about that).

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lizeylu's review against another edition

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mysterious

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

1.25

I felt like this book had so much potential to be super cool as the concept of “solving it before the experts” is a fun idea but wasn’t really applicable. There were so many plot twists which I can see is fun and keeps the story going but it’s impossible to predict as the twists are so far fetched.

Spoiler:
I felt like there wasn’t much information put into the actual story when we found out in the end so it ended up not feeling very solved. There were also so many loop holes and loose ends. The timings were also super confusing?? The show was recorded in May - July but broadcasted in October but somehow the audience was reacting to the story and somehow Ian Wilson was following the show in July even though it hadn’t been released yet?? Just not very clear and the mistakes really knock the fourth wall down. I also really disliked that all the experts were involved in some way, like I felt that a similar story could be really well done with unbiased experts. It just wasn’t necessary to the story to involve them imo.

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