Weycombe

‘'One does see so much evil in a village.''
Agatha Christie

To use a quote of the Queen of Crime, spoken by the exquisite Miss Marple, in a review about a book that was mediocre at its best moments is almost a sacrilege. And yet, I confess I was fooled, because my expectations were quite high.

Jill, the main protagonist of the novel, discovers a dead woman, one of the most prominent members of Weycombe, and starts a personal investigation to find the solution to the crime, Perhaps, as a distraction to her own unhappy life and her problematic relationship with her husband. Who knows? And to be honest and forward, with such bad writing, who cares? The way the story unfolded made me lose all interest.

The start was more than promising, it was exciting and the first 100 pages just flew by. And then, it was a disaster. Endless pages full of uninspired descriptions of the hypocritical posh village residents, countless paragraphs about cosmetic products -which I really like, but not when I am reading a book that desires to be called a ‘mystery''- and dialogues that sounded like a bad American sit-com. The only redeeming qualities were Jill, who was quite a sympathetic and realistic character, and the crime itself which was well-composed and with a few interesting twists. I didn't get the feeling of a ‘'cozy'' mystery, the atmosphere was dark, but badly depicted. In my opinion, the execution was very inadequate,the writing was simply not there.

Perhaps, many will succeed in overlooking the plethora of pages about rich and famous that had nothing to do with the mystery itself and enjoy the book much more than I did. For me, even finishing it was a struggle.

Many thanks to Midnight Ink and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.