The Appeal

I thought the concept of the book was really interesting, but a few things took me out of it. The overabundance of email correspondences seemed a bit too out of place for a novel in 2018. Maybe I am misunderstanding things, I don't know.

While the book cover invites you to try and solve the case, crucial information comes in the form of someone outside the events, who wasn't actively part of the investigation. While we are invited to solve it, we are not given enough information about the actual “evidence” and correspondences of the various characters involved in the mystery.

Additionally, we are not given ample opportunity to solve the case, because no real pause happens between the information being given to us and the trainees trying to solve the case - so who is really solving the case? I find the beauty of Christie and some of the Japanese mystery novels is that we - the reader - are given an opportunity to solve the case with all the evidence provided to us, which is always ample. But here, we are merely observers watching Femi and Charlotte solve the case.

The majority of the book is in the form of email correspondences, which does take me out of the reading of the novel, the discussion between the trainees happens in the form of text messages. It seems a bit of a large leap to see that a big lawyer and almost everyone in that tiny township are unable to use messaging apps, and instead rely on emails to communicate with each other, and often times very important information.

I also found the deliberate lack of correspondence from two people who are crucial to the plot are wholly omitted, very annoying. We only see their characterisation through the eyes/words of others. And, again, it didn't help me feel anything for the character and want to solve the mystery.

I also felt like the murder comes in too late into the novel, because we already know it is going to happen, so you keep waiting for it happen and it takes way too long for it to appear and then the ending is often rushed. Maybe that format is more appropriate for this kind of storytelling. It just wasn't my thing.

This is more of a 2.5 book for me. It was a bit too over hyped. I was quite disappointed at the end of this.