Reviews

Snowdrift by Helene Tursten

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The first 200 pages of this were fantastic. I loved Embla as a strong female main character and the setting is amazing. In the beginning it had the perfect balance between simple dialogs and action scenes.

However the ending was painfully weak. Not only was the big shocking plot twist obvious from the beginning, it also was poorly revealed. The ending felt rushed and ended on a random confessing video. Sadly, it also came across like the author had tried to tie together too many random cases to one big shocking reveal but got lost along the way. Parts of the plottwist just didn't make sense.
Also, some big events seemed to happen purely out of convenience. Of course the whole mafia gang shows up suddenly on a random day one after one at the place Embla just decided to take a look at.
Aiddiotnally there was a random romance side plot I didn't enjoy. While the couple was cute the plot was just so non-existing you couldn't have cared less about them being together out of the blue. Still confused why he was suddenly her boyfriend.

Nonetheless this did have an intriguing mystery, likeable characters and a super cool police dog who played a more or less big role in the book. Tore, the dog, was my absolute favorite. It's also super fast paced and fun to read. It kept me well entertained and without the ending I would have loved it much more.

kendraphilion's review

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dark mysterious tense slow-paced

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

2.5

I accidentally started this book not knowing it was part of a series, but I don’t think it impacted my level of enjoyment too much. I got the necessary details of what I assume was the overarching story of the series.

Things I liked:
A plot twist
Trying to figure out whodunit
The characters were interesting and had interesting and unique characteristics.

Things I didn’t like:
Sooooo many names of random people. I had to keep a list with descriptions.
A whole other murder that wasn’t relevant to the main one. I think it was to place some of the suspects, but honestly it got lost in all the information.
This may be the translation, but it felt like things were over described. Especially the food, there were paragraphs describing the food.
Just a pretty slow pace for a murder mystery.
I forgot details constantly, so when they were theorizing I couldn’t poke holes in it and had to keep referring to my notes to remember who was who.

rainbowbookworm's review against another edition

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2.0

I picked up this one not knowing that this was the third in a series. I didn’t care: I could not put it down; I was making plans to borrow the first and second books from the library, and then I got to the ending and what could have been a 4-star read disappointed me beyond belief.

robertjackson's review

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3.0

A well written book but ultimately disappointing. I much prefer stand alone books as opposed to books in a series that waste the finale to set the scene for another book.