Reviews with content warning for Murder - The Verifiers

Reviews tagging 'Murder'

The Verifiers by Jane Pek

47 reviews

legs_n_chins's review against another edition

adventurous emotional funny lighthearted mysterious medium-paced

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

3.0

At some point, lamp shading all the plot contrivances with a fictional mystery series stops being clever and charming and starts being a lazy excuse.

I went through several ups and downs as I was reading this book, but by about the 70% mark I just found myself becoming increasingly frustrated. The main character based every decision on this fictional mystery series that sounded like a trope-filled entertainment first series with a somewhat unbelievable protagonist and medium to low stakes action. I mean, it would be like me trying to solve a mystery and basing all my decisions off this book. Which is to say, the book failed to feel totally grounded and realistic to me because it relied heavily on plot contrivances. At some point I realized I had reached the limit to my suspension of disbelief. When Claudia started making certain leaps in logic in accordance with this fictional mystery series, I was skeptical but willing to follow along. It was a quirk of the character and it added layers to her personality. But when those leaps in logic paid off, kept coming, and then kept paying off, I really started to feel cheated. I don’t mind a mystery story structured like that! I love a good low stakes, campy mystery! But constantly trying to refer back to this fictional campy series made it seem like the author wanted this mystery to be taken more seriously and considered real real life. I also didn’t particularly love the reveal at the end. I might endeavor to read this again at a later date just to see, but thinking back, I just don’t think the author left the readers with enough genuine clues as to who the culprit was. It felt like one of those twists just for the sake of a twist and I’m not really crazy about those.

Not only that, but I couldn’t help feeling that Claudia didn’t really grow throughout the story. She’s selfish and self centered from the start and I never ended up getting the sense that she truly recognized that in a way that would make her want to change. So many of her selfish decisions or actions ended up somehow being rewarded; even if she did have a temporary period of experiencing consequences, it didn’t last in the end. The part of this book that truly felt authentic and grounded were the family dynamics, and in those cases I could see glimmers of genuine development in Claudia’s character as she began to understand her brother and sister and how they all as siblings related to each other. The scene at the end between Claudia and her mother, too, was really lovely. But somehow that felt disconnected from what Claudia did in the mystery plot and how she saw herself and the people around her beyond her own family. The two storylines were woven together pretty well, but I just couldn’t reconcile the Claudia who came out on the other side in her family life with the Claudia who came out on the other side of the mystery.

Some of the ways the author spoke also left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. There was something vaguely judgmental in all the descriptions of other people in the book. I think it can be down to Claudia’s view of the world, but it wasn’t an overly pleasant viewpoint to be in for 350 pages. Claudia never presented us with a reason to see Beck, for example, as anything but pretty and ruthless. Or Squirrel as anything but weird and hermit-like (in a supremely stereotypical portrayal of techies). It was to a point that I wondered if it was character voice or actually authorial bias starting to slip through. I didn’t much enjoy how Claudia viewed the world and the people around her by the end.

I realize I’ve just gone on for quite a bit about what I didn’t find really successful in the book, but despite that I did enjoy getting to the next part of the book. While the pacing was wonky in places, it did keep me engaged. Regardless of if I though the end reveal was effective, it still was very clever hoe the author tied all the strings together at the end. I appreciated that even Claudia’s siblings were somehow connected to it without even realizing. And I do think that emotional core of the family dynamics definitely upped my overall rating. It just felt so genuine and it had some real depth that it was easy to forget how frustrating I found the mystery plot when Claudia interacted with her siblings. I’m definitely in it for the complicated sibling relationships. If Claudia Lin is to become a regular detective across a mystery series, I think I would read the subsequent books. Maybe with different expectations going in so I’m not so frustrated by the biases I had about what I was getting into.

Content Warnings

laurenw's review against another edition

Go to review page

3.5

The main character rather annoyed me with her superiority shtick - I think I might be tired of correcting everyone around you masquerading as intelligence.
The book has a vibe that makes me feel I'd have enjoyed it more in my 20s.
The plot did keep me intrigued enough to finish at least

Content Warnings

rideauriverreads's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark mysterious medium-paced

4.5

Content Warnings

iseefirede's review against another edition

Go to review page

mysterious medium-paced

Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

3.0

Very mid book. It's not the worst book I've read but it also wasn't very interesting or challenging. If you want a cozy mystery this would probably work for you. But ultimately, there was so much potential that just wasn't used.

Content Warnings

amberinpieces's review

Go to review page

adventurous funny mysterious relaxing medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

Content Warnings

redur's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous funny lighthearted mysterious reflective medium-paced

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

4.5

A very good book that illustrates a very real problem: constant surveillance. It's interesting how that complete violation of privacy and consent gets so smoothed over with a fun-toned cozy mystery and leaves the moral quandary up to the reader.

It feels on purpose, like the way it hand waves the deep family trauma as well. The book touches on really dark material that people really suffer with but in a way that tries its best to ignore it, much like Claudia must do to just get through the day.

It's like a pop song that has a danceable melody with really dark and troubling lyrics.

Claudia is *not* a good person but seems to justify her use of total surveillance technology by using it for "good". She also goes on to

break and enter and steal "for good", justifying those crimes and violations of privacy and autonomy as well. I'm interested to see how far Claudia continues to slide down this slippery slope of vigilantism in future stories and whether the author will show these moral failings with anything other than ignoring it. And whether Claudia can reckon with what she is doing.

And then everything is happy in the end with all the means justified.

We certainly have real world examples of this, so it's certainly something to keep on your radar.

https://www.wired.com/story/how-pentagon-learned-targeted-ads-to-find-targets-and-vladimir-putin/

Content Warnings