sandaru's reviews
191 reviews

Not the Murakami's finest story. It still captures the absurdity of storytelling He uses with the plot and the characters. I did struggle to keep up with the story and the themes, which I believe is change and nostalgia in my own interpretation of it. 

Unlike the previous ones, it got a bit boring 

Not the best. Murakami is best with his fiction. There were great advice, but mostly things unfortunately didn't interest me much. Not a page turner as I expected. May be the fact I have already read the memoir before, made me feel like the same thing was being read. 

A good reference book for writers to understand the British English punctuations. I just hoped the writer cut the unnecessary details and made this more readable with point form. The funny, witty gritty details were great but it took me sometimes to finish it and only focus on my need which is learn the punctuations usage cases. Apart from that the book explains with examples how to use most of the basic punctuations. 

Took me 8 months to finish, with reading slumps in between. 
The story and the translation's language are very easy to understand and stay with the flow of the story. Big books like this, usually scare me off, or I get bored in the middle. Even if I took 8 months to finish this, the story and the flow never bothered me. It was relatable and interesting. 
Some parts dragged way too much, but the story was good overall. The characters' names were a bit confusing since the Russian names's full names and the short names are different, but you get used to it as you read. I liked how the author portrayed the crime and its punishment in so many layers.

Why must Rodion Raskolnikov commit the crime, thinking he has the authority to have a judgment and the right to punish the old pawnbroker woman over her crimes which resulted in Rodion having to go through his own share of crime and punishment? And how he was already being punished before the actual punishment by law. The emotional torment leads him to confess his crime, only to not repent about it later since that was given. And how the rest of the people around him who did not commit any crimes were punished even before the crime happened. It's a crazy book but very real to its core and relatable.

 

Good read!

Good reference for structuring your novel. I took a number of pointers and notes from this. But it was always unnecessarily long at times. I really liked the part where the plot structure timeline was discussed. I have already used it as the baseline for the structure of my novel. 

 The book is a quick and enjoyable read, featuring a fast-paced narrative that keeps you engaged. The story flows smoothly, maintaining a good balance between its feel-good elements and intriguing mystery. The unexpected double twist at the end adds complexity to the mystery, making it less predictable. However, I still find HJ's 'Five Survive' to be a more preferred choice over this one. 

I preferred the 1st story better than this one. Her writing style is interesting and engaging as ever but the plot seems a bit awkward and amateur compared to the first. Even in the first story, the villain was evident from the beginning, even in this more than it was evident, a lot of awkward troops and arc were included. Some parts felt stupid and some felt complicated unnecessarily. May be I am judging a middle grade book way too harsh, but I was expecting more detective plot and plot twists. 

As soon as I saw the book I wanted to read this (the whole series) as immediately as possible, for two reasons. 

One, this is a spin off story about one of my favourite crime writers, Agatha Christie and her sleuth character, Hercule Poirot. I adore the Poirot series and Christie's books. 

Second reason, I am in the middle of a similar project myself, writing a crime novel series for the middle grade audience. While reading, I compared and reflected on the areas I might have needed help/inspiration from, whether it's the suitable writing styles, grammar, dialogue or even potholes and plot related areas. It was really cool, reading someone's novel in order to get inspired or to learn. Much like a reference book sort of!

The writing style was humorous and engaging and kept me reading it faster, which I believe I should be inspired from for my own project. And the story is fairly decent and engaging, even if I guessed the killer from the first time of their appearance. (Or may be it's because I am just too into crime genre, I have learned to ignore the obvious and look at the not so obvious everytime) another things was, a lot of times the dialogue and the plot was great and coherent and smooth but there were parts I felt either awkward and rushed or even too slow and draggy. But overall for the middle grade audience, this would make a cute and engaging story. Something I wish I got to read as a kid. 

Ps: the misconception, or may be it's a real thing still!, about murder being the topic of a middle grade novel, was put aside by this author, which I am really grateful for teaching me that it's okay to write about a topic like that without making it a big deal. Not so gruesome but not too cute of a murder. Loved it.