Welcome to Litsy!

Perth-set art fraud mystery written by a surgeon, with a clunky, unbelievable romantic sub-plot.

Bloodless. Bone dry. This is a good thing in a surgical wound, but in a novel? No thanks.

A quick read and easy to stay interested, but painfully predictable. It felt like a prince version of Anastasia. I felt myself rolling my eyes at the main character's actions and attitude too many times. I also didn't love the way the author intentionally waited to reveal certain details in a very "tell me" instead of "show me" style. We got to the final third of the book and all of a sudden the main character reveals a completely different story.

This one is a pan for me. The book was fast-paced. However, none of the characters were likable. I finished it as I wanted to know how it ended but was left feeling "meh."

Throughout this fake dating romance, Aspen notes that the novels that followed her breakout debut lacked emotional depth. They were more skilled, better written, but heartless. That‘s how this book feels - devoid of authentic emotion. From a technical standpoint, it meets the genre conventions, but there‘s some truly terrible dialog, whole paragraphs that made me cringe, and don‘t even get me started on the completely ridiculous character names.

Don‘t read this book unless lots of animal death and racism don‘t bother you and you‘re just super into Victorian science. I‘m Brooke H on Goodreads if you want to read my full review. (And yes, I did read this entire book to prep for a trip to the Galapagos. Of which there was one chapter. So.)

It's 1896. Bookbinder's daughter Florence has fallen from grace and needs to use a ruse to be allowed to work at Rose Hall in Lancashire as a bookbinder. Soon Florence takes it upon herself to find out whether the lady of the manor really killed herself.

The book was too woke for 1896 and it felt like the woke topics were crammed into the novel to tick the boxes.

Anachronisms and too much telling.

This novel needed more editing.

A novel about ghosts, abuse, absent family, and found family. Nothing deep and nothing new. Charaters' pasts feel more like a plot device than truly being explored. 2 🌟

I hated most things about this book. In fact I believe my ratings of other books were based on comparison to this one 😂. Our panel reviewed it here

https://thereadersroom.org/2024/09/02/2024-booker-longlist-this-strange-eventful...

If you liked it, do me a favor and drop a comment in our blog with your review. I like there to be a diversity of view points in our reviews but none of us liked it. #bookerlonglist2024

This book was terrible.
*Horrible things are happening throughout the book*
MC: I must be dreaming this all up.....
And then me:(rolling my eyes)
Repeat!

This story was all over the place, and I just felt like nothing was really happening even though there would be climatic parts. Eventually, everything just fell flat and made no sense. Even though i highly anticipated this read, I would not recommend this book.

This was just flat. The story was not interesting, the plot wandered, and there was precious little chemistry between the main characters.