Reviews

Endless Night by Agatha Christie

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jessiecommerce's review against another edition

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4.0

I love that this reads like an episode of The Twilight Zone, and the ending was completely unexpected for me.

absbia777's review against another edition

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3.0

This book reads very differently from any other Agatha Christie novel I've read. The cast of characters is quite small compared to the others and at first you're wondering what the mystery even is. The story features a couple making a home for themselves on a cursed land known by locals as Gypsy's Acre. The mystery comes late in the book, but is it a good one.

aspygirlsmom_1995's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

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

5.0

cpope9's review against another edition

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4.0

To me, this was some of the author’s best storytelling. It isn’t like most of her other works and it feels immediately different than her normal mystery novels. And it continues throughout to feel and be different.

It’s an eerie tale that is well worth the read up until the last, final plot twist. There’s a number of interesting, looming omens that tease some mystery that never really seems to evolve, until it does. And then there’s only a few clear solutions. But rather some investigation or novel-long build up of characters and motives with some interesting reveal, we get a more interesting and realistic unraveling of the real goings-on. And I found that to be so much more intriguing than much of the author’s more lightly-told tales.

This was had a weight, weirdness, ominousness to it throughout with an eventually predictable (for those familiar with the author or the genre’s tropes) but still shocking payoff.

My only complaint was a sort of double twist at the end that affected only the last 5-10 pages. It didn’t really fit the rest of the plot or characters. It wreaked of an editor/publisher mucking about being over-worried about the perceptions an ending that wouldn’t have been so happy…so we got this: a forced over-saturation of just how bad the antagonist actually was the whole time and how they had to fall so super hard so everyone in the world could just be happy that the bad guy can’t win in the end, and that the bad guy never had any essence good in him anyway. Totally weak turn.

This was probably my favorite Christie novel up until that final stupid nonsense twist.

In the end I still really enjoyed it though and would revisit it in the future.