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A review by heroineinabook
The Midnight Hour by Elly Griffiths
3.0
It's simply OK.
When you review a digital ARC, it is hoped that the formatting of the file doesn't take away from the story and that the reviewer is conscious of this and doesn't use it against the book content.
That's the idea anyway.
But I cannot help but mentioned the formatting for this book was not that great. Paragraphs were broken up, words were overlapped, book info was sometimes deposited in between the sentences. I've published a book on Amazon before and it's not really that hard to get the formatting set up if you're willing to put in the time and energy to do it. That a professional publishing house didn't see fit to do that, yes yes, it's an ARC, is a bit lazy.
Back to the story.
The Midnight Hour is the sixth installment in the Brighton Mysteries. At this point, the characters are well established and a history has been formed. I give Griffiths points that she was able to fill in the missing pieces and the book can be read as a standalone. That's often a difficult job to do, why do authors go on forever?, and Griffiths pulls it out quite nicely.
I also felt the twists and turns of the story were strong, but it was the damned formatting that got me flustered and frustrated. I'm trying to enjoy a novel only to be besieged by a mess.
I didn't see the murderer coming and it wasn't obvious whodunnit which is also refreshing. The writing was okay, some places Griffiths was strong and other places a bit lackluster. Griffiths mentions in the afterword that she wrote the book during lock down and we all know that we're not in the best shape of mind so some parts felt a bit desperate. I did enjoy the characters did travel around England which I bet Griffiths was longing to do herself and let her fictional characters do it for her.
I like historical mysteries (especially cozies but this one is close to but I wouldn't go so far as to say it is) and I this this series has a lot of promise. The timing of the publication and writing period may have not been that great. Like I said, the book is OK. Serviceable and gets the job done. Griffiths won an Edgar for previous work so maybe this is a one off?
Griffiths is prolific. One of my libraries has 20 of her books alone so I'm totally up for reading her other work to see if she is all that and a bag of chips.
tl;dr: Serviceable. Worth if if you're a fan of the series or of Griffiths herself. Printed and formalized Kindle editions won't have the formatting issues so take that into consideration and my review affected by this as a grain of salt.
When you review a digital ARC, it is hoped that the formatting of the file doesn't take away from the story and that the reviewer is conscious of this and doesn't use it against the book content.
That's the idea anyway.
But I cannot help but mentioned the formatting for this book was not that great. Paragraphs were broken up, words were overlapped, book info was sometimes deposited in between the sentences. I've published a book on Amazon before and it's not really that hard to get the formatting set up if you're willing to put in the time and energy to do it. That a professional publishing house didn't see fit to do that, yes yes, it's an ARC, is a bit lazy.
Back to the story.
The Midnight Hour is the sixth installment in the Brighton Mysteries. At this point, the characters are well established and a history has been formed. I give Griffiths points that she was able to fill in the missing pieces and the book can be read as a standalone. That's often a difficult job to do, why do authors go on forever?, and Griffiths pulls it out quite nicely.
I also felt the twists and turns of the story were strong, but it was the damned formatting that got me flustered and frustrated. I'm trying to enjoy a novel only to be besieged by a mess.
I didn't see the murderer coming and it wasn't obvious whodunnit which is also refreshing. The writing was okay, some places Griffiths was strong and other places a bit lackluster. Griffiths mentions in the afterword that she wrote the book during lock down and we all know that we're not in the best shape of mind so some parts felt a bit desperate. I did enjoy the characters did travel around England which I bet Griffiths was longing to do herself and let her fictional characters do it for her.
I like historical mysteries (especially cozies but this one is close to but I wouldn't go so far as to say it is) and I this this series has a lot of promise. The timing of the publication and writing period may have not been that great. Like I said, the book is OK. Serviceable and gets the job done. Griffiths won an Edgar for previous work so maybe this is a one off?
Griffiths is prolific. One of my libraries has 20 of her books alone so I'm totally up for reading her other work to see if she is all that and a bag of chips.
tl;dr: Serviceable. Worth if if you're a fan of the series or of Griffiths herself. Printed and formalized Kindle editions won't have the formatting issues so take that into consideration and my review affected by this as a grain of salt.