Tag: family secrets

Book Notes West Heart Kill

Cheryl Russell

West Heart Kill

by Dann McDorman

ABOUT WEST HEART KILL

LOOKING FOR AN ANYTHING-BUT-ORDINARY WHODUNIT? • Welcome to the West Heart country club. Where the drinks are neat but behind closed doors . . . things can get messy. Where upright citizens are deemed downright boring. Where the only missing piece of the puzzle is you, dear reader.

A unique and irresistible murder mystery set at a remote hunting lodge where everyone is a suspect, including the erratic detective on the scene—a remarkable debut that gleefully upends the rules of the genre.

An isolated hunt club. A raging storm. Three corpses, discovered within four days. A cast of monied, scheming, unfaithful characters.

When private detective Adam McAnnis joins an old college friend for the Bicentennial weekend at the exclusive West Heart club in upstate New York, he finds himself among a set of not-entirely-friendly strangers. Then the body of one of the members is found at the lake’s edge; hours later, a major storm hits. By the time power is restored on Sunday, two more people will be dead . . .

My Thoughts on West Heart Kill

This book isn’t what I expected, and that isn’t a good thing.

First, this isn’t a murder mystery in the traditional sense, which makes this book unique but also is its weakness. The book concentrates on how a murder mystery is written, and the mystery itself is secondary. Various points of view are also employed in the book-first person, third person, and what really put me out of the story-second person.  Second person is used to tell the reader what assumptions the reader is making and when those assumptions were wrong, it really disrupted what was already a complicated read. Another format used in the book was that of a play. Personally, I don’t like reading plays to begin with. The format was used to make the reader a participant in trying to solve, at this point, multiple murders, but it added another layer of difficulty in trying to keep straight what was going on.

A multiple number of identical characters also made for a difficult read. There is really nothing to distinguish one from another—they are all unhappy, can’t cope without alcohol or drugs or both, cheat on their spouses, and are just difficult to keep straight. I really didn’t care about any of them.

-Recommendation

This book wasn’t for me, but if it sounds like something you might enjoy, give it a try, maybe by borrowing a copy from the library or a friend.

Thanks to #NetGalley and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor, for providing a copy of the book. All opinions are my own.

Publishing Information
Hardcover | $28.00
Published by Knopf
Oct 24, 2023 | 288 Pages | 6-1/8 x 9-1/4| ISBN 9780593537572

 

Book Notes: The Cartographers Review

Cheryl Russell

 

The Cartographers
by Peng Shepherd

A map is much more than it seems. Also? I wished I had paid more attention to paper maps. 😮

About The Cartographers

What is the purpose of a map? 

Nell Young’s whole life and greatest passion is cartography. Her father, Dr. Daniel Young, is a legend in the field and Nell’s personal hero. But she hasn’t seen or spoken to him ever since he cruelly fired her and destroyed her reputation after an argument over an old, cheap gas station highway map.

But when Dr. Young is found dead in his office at the New York Public Library, with the very same seemingly worthless map hidden in his desk, Nell can’t resist investigating. To her surprise, she soon discovers that the map is incredibly valuable and exceedingly rare. In fact, she may now have the only copy left in existence…because a mysterious collector has been hunting down and destroying every last one—along with anyone who gets in the way.

But why?

To answer that question, Nell embarks on a dangerous journey to reveal a dark family secret and discovers the true power that lies in maps…

Perfect for fans of Joe Hill and V. E. Schwab, The Cartographers is an ode to art and science, history and magic—a spectacularly imaginative, modern story about an ancient craft and places still undiscovered.

 

My Thoughts

I really enjoyed this book-a murder mystery with magical elements. The story is told through several points of view from people who knew Nell and her parents when Nell was just a toddler, before everything went horribly, terribly wrong.

I also really enjoyed the magical elements, which are rooted in the history of map-making, corporate greed, and plagiarism.

This is also a story of obsession, sacrifice, and deeply held secrets that have the power to destroy…and to heal.

I pulled me in and held me to the end.

Recommended if you enjoy your mysteries with a bit of magical realism.

 

 

Publishing Information

ISBN: 9780062910707
ISBN 10: 0062910701
Imprint: William Morrow Paperbacks
Pages: 400 pages