DocHawk

Loved This!

Revisado: 12-27-22

I don’t know why, but I was absolutely delighted by every part of this story. The voice actors were amazing, I loved the characters, a wonderful use of L.A. as a setting, and terrific story. I liked how the main story wove through each episode but that each episode also had a storyline of its own. So much fun!

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Magical

Revisado: 11-23-22

It feels like such a gift when a beautiful, uplifting story is paired with an extraordinarily talented narrator, which happens with this book. Deserves all the praise that it's getting.

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Main Characters to Love, Great Narration

Revisado: 11-23-22

Like others have said, this book is much longer than it needed to be, and early on I found it a bit tedious. However, I love these two main characters so much, and I find the world Galbraith creates to be so immersive and one that I love living in through this series, that the length was a forgivable sin. And the narrator, Robert Glenister, is excellent--not sure how he does it, but he sounds exactly the way I imagine Cormoran Strike would sound, He also is gifted at all of the other characters and voices. I also found a lot of food for thought, especially towards the end, because I was confronted with the vitriolic social media attacks that people have to endure (usually when I'm on social media I find the ugliness unbearable and I look away, but this book made that hard to do).

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Good Premise Not Realized

Revisado: 11-28-20

I started out really excited about and enjoying this book because of the ostensible connections to mathematics (how unique and interesting to think about mathematically quantifying elements of crime solving). But after awhile it became so tedious that it took me weeks to finish. There was so much focus on the logistics of committing a crime that it felt like it was written by a technocrat. There was little or no character development, sense of place, or connections that might make you care for what was going on in the story.

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esto le resultó útil a 10 personas

Solid Story (If a Little Longer Than Need Be)

Revisado: 11-28-20

This book was long so maybe the whole trans issue that so many people have mentioned slipped by me (and believe me, I was looking--I wanted to decide for myself on how to react to the issue in Rowling's writing). In the whole thing, I only saw one sentence about a man dressed as a women as a possibility (when many possibilities were being considered). And that was it--the transphobia I had been dreading did not manifest in this story.
Having said that, the book itself was good but would have been much better if it had been edited down. There were a lot of tangential side stories of cases the crew members were working on. On the one hand, I enjoyed that sense of really feeling like I could see the work up close and personal. On the other hand, my own job (not a detective) has enough tedium that I think I could have understood it in Rowling's book without having had to experience it. Rowling is skilled at creating fictional people that you can fall in love with and Strike and Robin, for me, definitely are two characters I love.

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esto le resultó útil a 1 persona

Excellent Narration Elevates the Story

Revisado: 11-28-20

I listened to this on audio and the reader was so excellent that I think I may have enjoyed the book more than if I had read it. It had a lovely, creepy vibe that made me jump at my own shadow when I listened during my evening walks, but thankfully missing were the overt gratuitous violence sometimes found in this genre. Instead of dumb women walking into dangerous situations as if they'd never watched a horror movie, the main character in this book is smart enough not to be led astray. And perhaps the twist is that there really wasn't a twist? Which I think I'm okay with. It feels like some books are so focused on creating a twist that it's become cliche and oftentimes too farfetched to believe. This was just a solid mystery where the layers were peeled back in a systematic way till you got to the core. I will however, agree, that there was something a little out of left field in terms of the whodunit piece, but not enough to have seriously diminished my enjoyment of this story.

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esto le resultó útil a 3 personas

An Unpalatable Main Character

Revisado: 01-17-20

I can’t think of a character I have disliked more than the main one, Lo, in this book. Literally every paragraph (no hyperbole—it was LITERALLY EVERY paragraph) was an exchange that was awkward, inappropriate, cringe-worthy, etc. Every time a choice had to be made, Lo excessively agonized, seemed to know what should be done and then did the opposite, all the while feeling sorry for herself. The characterization felt so off to me, because on the one hand she is supposed to be a motivated journalist working her way up the ranks, but then in the other hand she spends the first 2/3 of the book bemoaning the fact that all the other journalists are accumulating information but she’s not (primarily because she seems incapable to saying no to the offerings of alcohol and spends pretty much every moment either drunk or hungover or because her ability to have a conversation and ask questions without being a creep or an idiot, important for a journalist, doesn’t seem to exist).
It was unfortunate because I think Ruth Ware is a really fantastic writer and the book was tightly plotted and would have been terrific if I could have stomached the main character. I did finish the book, thinking that maybe there was a point to such a pathetic personality but when there wasn’t a point, I mostly felt resentful at having given such a needy, whiny, self-pitying character so much of my literary time.

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esto le resultó útil a 5 personas

The Perfect Match between Story and Performance

Revisado: 10-07-19

An absolutely fantastic listen/read. The story had a wonderful creepy vibe (perfect for October) and some great twists. The characters were well drawn, the pacing was excellent, and the narrator was as perfect as one can hope.

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Super Charming

Revisado: 05-21-19

I listened to the Audible Originals version of this and found it a delightful story, perfect for middle school aged kids (and adults who sometimes want to revert back).

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esto le resultó útil a 2 personas

Childish and Inane

Revisado: 05-21-19

I should have been clued in by the title—My First Murder which somehow reminded me of a kids book like My First Coloring Book. The main character is an inane, infantile “lead” detective who spends every other breath either whining about how she doesn’t even really want to be a detective or confessing that she doesn’t really know what she’s doing. A few times in the beginning she says that the only reason she has the job is because she’s a woman and there is some governmental effort to improve representation of women in the police force. Sometimes she asserts her “strength” and “feminist” credentials by doing things like telling her boss not to smoke in her office. But other times she reflects on how her too tight shirt (button about to pop off) or her tight jeans make other cops and suspects take her less seriously. Sometimes when hanging out with the suspects (yes, literally hanging out, having tea, having beer, because they are an old circle of friends) she asks them questions about their private lives which she freely admits is just her being nosy and nothing to do with her investigation. Ugh. The reasons why a novice like her was put in charge of a murder investigation is either seriously implausible or a serious danger sign on the incompetence of the Finnish police network.

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