A review by oracle
Sometimes People Die by Simon Stephenson

dark funny mysterious slow-paced

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

2.75

This book was funny at times and definitely entertaining, but ultimately had a few thing that really kept me from fully enjoying it:

1. The book is narrated in past tense, with the main character recalling everything that happens in the story. This would have been okay except that there was very little dialogue, and instead the narrator would say "X said this, to which I responded with...", and a lot of it was paraphrasing instead of what the full dialogue actually was. For me, this made it hard to get a sense of the other characters and connect with them. I guess it may have been to further the unreliable narrator thing, but that wasn't very successful either in my opinion.
2. Spoilers for the mystery!
   The murderer seemingly had no motive, and there was never any insight into why she did any of the stuff she did or how she became a serial killer. She also was initially described as being really perfect, I assume so the reader wouldn't suspect her, but then once she was revealed to be the killer we were never really revealed any additional information so it just seemed like her character was really disjointed/didn't make much sense
   .
3. The author sometimes made some weird claims, such as having the narrator say something along the lines of "all serial killers are creepy men who wear their mother's clothes" and stuff like that. I honestly didn't have a problem with it at first because I just assumed it was added to convey that the main character isn't a great guy. But then after reading the part that was set in (I guess this is spoilers for the ending too)
   Africa, I felt like I could attribute it to the author more, who despite writing about a real place that exists, chose not to do any research and instead assumed that the airport of Zambia must be minuscule and that Mbala's hospital was nothing more than a tent. Simply because it's in Africa I guess.
   So all of that rubbed me the wrong way, and pulled me out of the story. I assume not everyone is going to be googling the different places in the story like I did though.

That all being said, I did really enjoy the hospital setting and how detailed the author went into describing different diseases and procedures. I'm guessing that won't be as appealing to every reader, but I like medical stuff, so this was a really enjoyable aspect of the story for me. I actually liked these parts much more than any of the characters or the mystery to be honest. The historical healthcare murder sections were really interesting as well, but didn't help the book's already slow pacing. All in all, I definitely enjoyed some of this book, and thought the story was interesting, but I had mixed feelings about it as a whole. I would like to read more medical mysteries/thrillers in the future thanks to this book though!