The Plot

Interesting story, and good writing. But the villian was telegraphed fairly early in the novel, so there was not a lot of suspense.

Hype, hype, hype, hype...you'd think this novel was the second coming of Christ. Not only is it not nearly as clever as you've been led to believe, it's about as original as an episode of Law and Order. There's one fairly well drawn character who's also a stereotype, the jaded "I could have been a contender" writer of literary fiction who can't give up on his dream of being famous, and I confess that stomping around in this guy's dreary, sadsack world for the first fifty pages did keep me entertained. After that, I progressively lost interest as The Plot became more and more about...plot.

Anyway, all power to Goodreads and its ability to sell books. We're not worthy!

Après une longue plongée dans le steampunk, j'avais envie de changer un peu d'air avec un roman totalement différent de mes lectures récentes. J'ai choisi ce roman que j'avais repéré il y a quelques mois et dont les critiques étaient élogieuses.

Je n'ai pas été déçu de mon choix, c'est exactement ce que j'attendais : un roman plutôt bien écrit, avec une intrigue bien construite, du suspense et un rythme bien géré. Un bon page-turner, très efficace dans son genre.

Je ne vais évidemment pas révéler ici le coeur de l'intrigue, c'est une histoire qu'il faut découvrir par soi-même en se demandant si on saura détecter avant tout le monde les surprises et les rebondissements que nous réserve l'auteur.

Cela a très bien fonctionné pour moi, j'ai passé un bon moment de lecture avec ce thriller autour d'un écrivain et de son roman-phare.

I really enjoyed this book even though I guessed the twist early on.

I saw the ending coming about halfway through. It’s hard to maintain suspense in that situation. Maybe I’ve seen too many twisty tv series. Bummed out that this was not nearly as entertaining as I’d expected

The first few chapters are such plodding exposition I forgot what kind of book I was reading. Fortunately things pick up. In fact, it changes gears so abruptly, it felt like two different books... I momentarily wondered whether this was some kind of intentional metafiction device.
I saw "the twist" coming from miles away, looong before the halfway mark, but it was still enjoyable seeing how we'd get there.
More like 3.5 stars than 3.

I'm a sucker for novels about writers and writing, so this one pulled me in from its initial pages, which I've seen other people describe as slow. I expected this to be a self-inflicted psychological drama along the lines of Crime & Punishment, so I was happy to discover it was actually more of a mystery.