Reviews

The Puzzle Master by Danielle Trussoni

Only show reviews with written explanations

erindigsegypt's review

adventurous dark mysterious reflective 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? Yes

4.0

I mean no disrespect to the author but this read like someone asked ChatGPT to write a historical mystery/thriller with esoteric elements in the style of the Da Vinci code. There were a lot of gaps in the story, a lot of narrative elements that didn’t really work, and, ultimately, I didn’t really care how it ended by the time I got to the end of the book.

bshnider22's review

Go to review page

adventurous challenging dark mysterious tense medium-paced

5.0

the_heather_martin's review

Go to review page

3.0

With a title like puzzle master I had hoped this book would be right up my alley. But it was disappointing. It started off at a good clip and I loved the first 1/3rd of the book. Then I got bogged down in the mire of a side story of porcelain and dolls that dragged. The last 1/3rd of the book was also exciting and well written. And I forced myself to not even try to understand how a puzzle created hundreds of years ago might influence artificial intelligence and current religion.

For me, the bite was too big. It had all the trappings of Dan Brown’s DaVinci Code…but it tried to do many things…and I stopped trying to keep all of the tv-cop-murder-board-red-string connections together.