The Puzzle of Blackstone Lodge

I feel a bit misled by the premise of this one. I've heard of an unreliable narrator, but never an unreliable synopsis. While it's heavily implied that there's some huge locked-room history afoot, it's more of a town-with-a-dirty-secret story. And that's fine. It just wasn't what I expected.

There were things about the story I enjoyed. The characters were mostly pretty well thought out. The twist involving Nell was great. I can't get into details without spoiler tagging this, so I won't. The other twists I didn't love. And while it made me laugh, it was pretty weird that every death was set up like “Oh no, we found a body!” “My goodness, I do say” almost to parody status. Rachel was one of the weakest characters in my opinion, too.

My verdict is a solid 2.5 out of 5 rounded up. Which brings me to the next mystery...

How is this book carrying such a mediocre rating but all of the top comments are 4 and 5 stars? A little delving into the situtation and I, not quite Rachel Savernake, have found something interesting. All of the top comments are by people who received advanced copies. My goodness, I do say! I've heard of this, but this is one of the first time I've actually seen this happen on GR. Guess I'll try to stay away from the viral BookTok-y stuff for my own sanity's sake.

I really wanted to love it. I just felt the characters were really one dimensional. I kept hoping the life would come into the book, but it never did.

Brilliant concept and I loved the plot but the characters really bought the whole thing down for me,

2.5 stars