Reviews with content warning for Murder - The Spare Room

This book bombards you with context and explanations, so every new one feels immediately suspicious and you never know who to trust.

Kelly is excruciatingly self doubting and insecure. Combined with the narrator's voice for her in emotional scenes, I found her annoying. However I did relate to her moments of frustration at being consistently left out of the loop or her desire for plans and predictability being treated with disdain. And she does grow, which of course we get to see in her thoughts in elaborate detail, which slows down tense moments so much it's shocking the other characters don't comment on her long pauses before reacting!

In addition to some moments being drawn out, others are glossed over and omitted, only told to us later. Kelly's thoughts refer to past moments of relationship building that we didn't get to see, which makes them feel fake and trying too hard prove the closeness is developing. Would have been more effective for me if those fond moments were on page, not mental reflections.

I'm still not sure how I feel about stories being set during the height of the pandemic - they either feel like inauthentic shallow set dressing or way to heavy for me to think about. This one leans toward shallow and mainly serves to further isolate the characters. Also for how often Virgo appears and does very catlike things, no mention is ever made of feeding her, even though other mundane daily things (like feeding the humans) comes up a lot! Minor observation, I know.

Content Warnings

lavloveslit's review against another edition

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emotional mysterious tense slow-paced

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

2.5

This was a spontaneous pick on the Libby app, I read it on Kindle app on my phone. Just kinda went for it as I like to always be reading one e-book. I'll probably stick to my usual method of researching a book before starting it. This wasn't a wow-er by any means, but I still enjoyed it enough to finish it.

I don't think I've ever disliked a main character as much as Kelly - which made it an interesting and frustrating read. I did appreciate the poly and queer representation, albeit if it was a toxic and "what not to do" representation. This story wasn't what I was quite expecting, I usually love some romance elements but everything felt forced and unnatural. And I did not like a single character in this book. Not every great book needs likeable characters, but great books need at least complex characters and every character in this story fell fairly flat for me. Also was expecting it to have thriller elements throughout but really it's only slightly "tense" and the last maybe 20% could be considered a thriller.

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snoopyfanclub's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

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

2.25

Kelly is dumber than a bag of rocks. Like good god. Truly have to suspend a LOT of disbelief over this plot.

Content Warnings

vicktorea's review against another edition

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dark mysterious medium-paced

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

2.0

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d0505's review

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mysterious tense slow-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

0.5

This book didn’t work for me at all. The main character is ridiculous and there was absolutely no chemistry within the relationship at all. They went from virtual strangers to suddenly the main character was willing to risk & lose everything for her partners that she was deeply in love with out of the blue. It’s like she had no sense of self worth. Furthermore, the entire plot was implausible. This story annoyed me.

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an_library_stan's review against another edition

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tense fast-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

1.0

Unquestionably some of the worst writing I've read. I think it's aiming somewhere between thriller, romance and smut? But it wasn’t smutty. It was suspenseful at times, but clumsy plot or writing invariably took me out of it at key moments. The romance felt generic and so normy. A good reminder that bisexuals are a diverse community and some of us are unironically hanging live laugh love signs in our foyers.

Mind you, I did finish all 64 chapters, prologue and epilogue (in a 325 page book). I was entertained. But first I had to re-orient myself. The writing was going to be bad, so why not enjoy it for its comedic value?

A word on the language.

It's a bad sign when an author uses the phrase, "the vibe was…" But lo, chapter 1, page 1 had the following gem:

While I sat in the cavernous belly of Thirtieth Street Station, the vibe was fearful, hushed, crackling with distrust.

The overuse of metaphors and similes annoyed me. Many of them were redundant and others contradictory. Eventually I started bookmarking my favorites. Here are a few:

I tap his name on my phone-no answer. Anxiety hops and swirls like chickadees.

Maybe he'll sit in that kennel of an apartment and realize how much he misses me, how much we love each other. I sit up and let hope roll around in me like wine dregs in a glass.

The tires crunch over gravel as we pull into the parking lot, a level point in this sea of crinkled land. The sky feels closer here, like someone lowered it with a pulley, the unbroken blue so rich and bright I could almost brush my fingers against it. In the woods, shards of sunlight pelt us like hail, trees and shrubs bow at our feet, and sculptural mushrooms blip out of logs.

As our lips touch, a million thoughts run through my mind at once, all in a microsecond, a computer's hyperthreading, a multitude of sparks charging out of a center point, a big bright-red firework that lights the whole night sky.

Hours later, as the sky is darkening, I watch the gate close behind their Lexus. My heart's already thumping like I've joined the line outside a haunted house. I let time pass in case they turn around. When I'm sure they're gone, I spring into action.

The voice is the flame that touches the end of the firecracker and makes the truth blaze: Elizabeth

We continue our sweep, making sure we're alone, checking for chinks in the security, looking for evidence that this was an outside job. I feel like we're Dickens characters wearing nightshirts and holding oil lamps and scurrying around a spooky mansion. We find nothing; the house is sealed up tight.

Deep breath in and shoom, we're off, moving fast like the sphere in a pinball machine. We walk through the whole day in detail, starting with the minute I drove home from the Ritz and encountered a surprising new houseguest. My confidence grows every time we move ahead in my recounting, like this is a board game and I'm inching closer, closer to the end.

Lets talk about chapters.

The chapter breaks had me loling. Dropped in randomly amongst the pages like chocolate sprinkles in vanilla ice cream. One example:

No. I have no idea what's about to come out of her mouth, but I know it's big and bad and it has the potential to turn this entire offer on its head. That means it's the last thing I want to hear. Stop there. She sighs. "Right now... she's missing."

(Chapter break)

I rock backward. "Missing?" They both nod gravely. "From the District," she says. "We heard it on the news. They still haven't found her." "That's terrible." My fingers fan against my breastbone. It's incomprehensible, something from a true-crime special. "What do they think happened to her?"

The chapter beginnings felt like a bad YA novel. E.g.

A gun fires, bang, and I startle awake. It's bright now, sun soaking through those filmy curtains. I don't hear it again. A truck back-firing, maybe.

Brooklyn-I love it, the bustle, the fat, fire-hued boughs forming tunnels over streets of sepia brownstones, the playgrounds bubbling with children and parks fizzing with groups of friends.

(this book is supposed to be in the lockdown days of covid, I'm not clear why Brooklyn and Philly were so crowded and bustling).

I thought the book might be smutty. Alas, she gave us plenty of room to read between the lines.

"Leave it," he says. "We'll get your presents later." "Aren't you Miss Popular?" Sabrina adds. She grabs Nathan's shoulder to jokingly push him out of the way. She kisses me too, and runs a hand along my side. When it's over and I'm flushed and breathless and floating in the stratosphere, I murmur, "Let's do that forever."

Nathan seals himself in his office that night, so Sabrina visits me in my room, nuzzling my neck and kissing my temple, my collarbone, my belly. When she's done, I try to return the favor, but after seeming close for an uncomfortably long time, she touches my cheek.

What the book lacks in smut, it does not make up through other forms of intimacy. For much of the book, Kelly mourns the great relationship she had with Mike. In which he remembered that she doesn’t like graveyards, and they crack jokes on long car rides. I wish Mike was just a foil to make her relationship with Nathan and Sabrina seem more exciting, but their dynamics aren’t much deeper.

"How's Virginia?" Mike's voice is reedy and weak. It cheers me, in a twisted way; him mourning my departure is a good sign. Okay so far. I'm trying to find the entrance to a graveyard now." "Why? You hate cemeteries." A tender nip to my heart-he really knows me.

Not like Mike. Before the pandemic locked us inside and brought out the worst in us, we could still delight each other with a goofy joke. Back in February, we passed the time on the thirteen-hour drive from Chi- cago with a game: pointing at things along the road and spinning out silly hypotheticals. We should buy that abandoned skating rink. We should move into that RV park. We should get jobs at the water park on that billboard. Imagined futures tied together by me. I jab my fork into a tortellini, piercing it like an eye. "Are most of your friends in DC.?"

Finally, some thoughts on the plot.

The twists and turns in the murder mystery felt implausible, both in what happens and in how they are introduced. Everyone’s a suspect in this book. If you think someone is geographically too far away to commit a murder, guess again! If you think someone has been exonerated, guess again! You’ll get to go back and forth and back and forth with Kelly - our first person narrator - about whether she is deeply in love with a character and they her, or whether they committed a murder and are about to murder her! At one point we get Kelly wondering whether she committed the murder, apparently while sleep walking? She’s relieved on multiple occasions that she didn’t kill another character subconsciously.

Kelly is not particularly bright but she is self-absorbed. At one point she seemingly narrowly escapes to a hotel from her lovers, who she now (finally) suspects of murdering their ex-partner. The next morning she's returning to their house ready to "make things work."

If you are ever worried about your ability to produce a work of fiction, read this book. If you know someone who feels like their writing is bad, gift them this book. Don’t let good be the enemy of done. And hey, I was clearly entertained.

Content Warnings

booked_with_meg's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious tense fast-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

3.5

Content Warnings

lauren_lovestoread's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced

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

2.75

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