I rarely bother to read books that are rated less than 3 stars on Goodreads. That community generally has decent taste. Sophie Hannah’s latest (or second to latest, I’m not sure) has a 2.76 rating. But I love Sophie Hannah! Most of her books are great, and the ones that aren’t great are at least pretty good. So I ignored the rating and grabbed a copy of The Orphan Choir at the library. I’m sorry, Goodreads — I should have listened. This book was so, so bad. “It […]
How did I get so behind??
I have five books to review today. Bear with me, please, as I flood the front page. This is one of the few Sophie Hannah (Spilling CID) books that I didn’t outright love. Her plots are usually bit far-fetched — the twisty secrets behind the murder as well as Simon’s various leaps to the truth — but this one in particular seemed…overwrought. A famous, antagonistic writer named Damon has been found murdered in his home, suffocated by a knife taped to his mouth. The killer painted […]
Zailer & Waterhouse #8
There are two aspects to Sophie Hannah’s Spilling CID series. First, the murder (or whatever crime, but mostly it’s a murder) that occurs in each novel. These crimes are intricately plotted (I have literally never figured one out 100% ahead of time, and I read a lot of books like this), usually with cases of mistaken identities and lots of secrecy. Each book is narrated in first person by someone close to the plot. The second aspect to these series is the relationship between Charlie Zailer […]
The Little Gray Cells Ride Again
I picked this up from the library on a whim, ‘how is it possible for a new Hercule Poirot to exist?!?‘ The estate approved a new title by a new author, bestselling Sophie Hannah. So money, an effort to revive interest in her existing works, perhaps. The first thing I noticed, after the shock wore off, is the sheer size of this book. Agatha Christie novels are never longer than 150, 175 pages maximum. This large book is 320 pages long. Hmmmm… We begin with […]
Overblown and underwhelming
Normally, when I post a review of Hannah’s books on here and tweet the link, I’ll include her twitter handle. She gives good chat on there and also reads the reviews (she commented on something specific in one of mine, so it’s not like she was just all “oh thanks” about it). I won’t be doing it on this one, because holy fucking shit I thought this book was absolutely terrible. Admittedly, I’ve read the books out of sequence, which doesn’t help matters. I started […]