Reviews

Agatha Christie I don’t think in the 21st century that you’d use some of the racially driven terminology that you used in this fairly regularly, but woof from my reading perspective I could not get passed that in some instances. I will say I enjoyed the setting and the mystery here and I was not quite able to figure out whodunnit so that’s a plus big time. I always enjoy seeing the bad guys get theres in the end.

daisyyy's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-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

meimi's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging emotional mysterious slow-paced

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

3.0

Things I liked about this book:

Plenty of possible culprits and plausible motives, the actual process of trying to solve it was very fun for me
Lots of tangled plot points affecting the main mystery
Relationships between all the characters were a key part of the story

Things I’m conflicted about:

I found the ending unsatisfying (the actual solution is fine, but I didn’t like the way it was presented, please see spoiler section below for more details)
The first half(?) was EXTREMELY slow and difficult to get into (Once the crime itself took place, this stopped being a major issue)
Some plot threads felt pointless or like a waste of time (eg. random characters suddenly getting engaged)

Spoiler

My theory was that Tim committed the crimes on behalf of Joanna, so I was taken in by a rather splendid red herring, well done Christie. There were clues to the actual culprits that I didn’t pick up on, and I can accept that. Nevertheless, I strongly dislike when a mystery is resolved with “obvious suspicious person is the culprit”, because I don’t like investing my time into a puzzle only to find that I put in far too much effort, because I could’ve told you that Jacqueline and Simon were suspicious right away. The reason I abandoned that possibility was because the story told me repeatedly that it was impossible for them to be the culprits, and I accepted that as a ‘rule’ for the mystery instead of something to be interrogated. That’s my mistake, I won’t trust Christie with such things in the future, but it felt like a bit of a slap in the face.

mandah_s's review against another edition

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challenging mysterious tense fast-paced

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

3.5

evelynnnn's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging informative mysterious tense fast-paced

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

4.5

notalie's review against another edition

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mysterious slow-paced

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

2.25

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