This wasn't my cup of tea. I dislike present-tense narrative intensely. It destroys nearly every good book and it doesn't work here; secondly, the formatting is abysmal. There are virtually no scene breaks, so it's like a seriously bad case of head-hopping. Scenes change in the next sentence, not even the next paragraph. Lastly, there just aren't enough dialogue tag lines, so I just couldn't keep up with who was speaking.

Even if I could have put up with all that, sadly, I just couldn't gel with the book. It was tedious, rather convoluted and hard to keep up with. The POV change at the end was confusing too. Nicky's character went from third to first POV. There was quite a twist at the end, but like the rest of book, overwrung. It was as if one twist wasn't enough, so the author chucked in another couple, by which time it just got a bit silly.

I'm not a DNF person, and I suppose I was interested enough to see it through to the end, but I didn't pick up my Kindle with relish, eager to continue. It was more of a, 'I suppose I should finish this to see how it all pans out'. ( )

This was okay to good. Occasionally found it a bit confusing and would have to re-read sentences trying to figure out what was the meaning was. I didn't expect the twist at the end so that was interesting. The description on the book jacket lays out the initial plot and then reads 'when a corpse appears in the family's koi pond...' so I thought hm, sounds intriguing. But I was more than half-way through the book before the corpse appeared. Setting up the plot therefore seemed to take forever, and nothing much was happening before that. So you need to have patience to read this book, and figure out that there are clues being given until the corpse appears. So, it was okay for the first half of the book and better during the 2nd half. ( )

A stylized literary thriller and family mystery.

Nicky Hunter is somewhat an expert in mysteries and detective fiction, and she has been corresponding with a famous novelist, Sebastian Trapp, for years. Now that he is dying, she's invited out to San Francisco to meet him. He says he wants her to write his final story, sort of a biography, of his life. When she arrives at the mansion, she meets his current wife, Diana, his daughter, Madeleine, and some other extended family. Sebastian hints that the two, while working together on his story, might solve an old mystery -- perhaps to finally reveal what happened to Sebastian's first wife and his teen son who vanished on New Year's Eve in 1999.

This was long. And wordy. Other than that, the plot was interesting, and the characters were mysterious and somewhat hard to figure out. Not fast paced, it takes ages to get to the big reveals and I must admit there were a few surprises. There are lots of references to the works of other famous mystery writers of old, and many quotes. I read along while listening to the audiobook which was done well although it would have been even better with multiple narrators.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the e-book ARC to read and review. ( )

Tõesti suurepärane krimka, absoluutselt ei sarnane autori esimesele raamatule, mis minul kahjuks pooleli jäi. Väga mängulises keeles ja ohtralt põimitud vihjete (ja tsitaatidega) klassikalisest krimikirjandusest, omamoodi ja üllatav. Julgen väga soovitada! ( )