The Dinner by Herman Koch

Title: The Dinner

Author: Herman Koch

Pages: 306

Publisher: Hogarth

Publication date: January 1 2009

Intro

Two couples dine together at a restaurant. Each aware that their children have done something awful together. Over the courses, the events of the night they all know they must talk about are revealed, and tensions between the diners reach a boiling point

My thoughts

I really don't have much to say about this novel. It's the first novel that BookTok has ever influenced me to buy, and I really thought I was going to like it more than I did. It did deliver a tense atmosphere that I loved, but I found that none of the characters were at all likeable. I can forgive a cast of unlikeable characters pretty easily if they're at least a little bit interesting, but I also found that none of the characters were fully developed or fleshed out enough for me to forgive their unlikeable personalities for the sake of the plot. It was hard to care about what happened/what will happen to the characters after the story ends because of this.

Overall, I have a very lukewarm opinion on this one. It's just okay. It was fine for something quick but it's unlikely that this will ever be a story I revisit.  

Everyone Who Can Forgive Me Is Dead by Jenny Hollander

Title: Everyone Who Can Forgive Me Is Dead

Author: Jenny Hollander

Pages: 292

Publication date: February 6, 2024

Intro

Nine years after an event dubbed "Scarlet Christmas" occurred, Charlie Colbert has completely rebuilt her life. Engaged and holding a high position at a magazine, Charlie knows that a movie being made about Scarlet Christmas could tear apart everything that she's worked so hard for.

Charlie doesn't remember everything about that night, and she doesn't know exactly what the movie could reveal. In order to prevent the movie from being made, she has to confront the memories hidden within herself, and she's not so sure she's going to like what she finds.

My thoughts

I am sad to say that this is one of the novels that I liked the idea of more than I enjoyed the actual story.

There are definitely things that I enjoyed about this book. I will always love a murky memory story. An "I don't know what happened bit it wasn't good and I think I had something to do with it" story. I also really liked the dual timeline. THEN, as Charlie pieces together the awful night nine years ago, and NOW  as she does everything she can to avoid the prevent the movie from being made and potentially destroying her life.

The premise was there. The foundation was strong. I really thought this would be at least a four star read for me, and it was shaping up to be one, for awhile at least. I was really enjoying Charlie's descent into paranoia. But soon, the plot became slow and repetitive, and around the 50% mark, I found myself losing interest. I continued reading because I was waiting for the reveal at the end, but I found even the climax to be lackluster. 

This story isn't what I hoped it would be, but I would give the author another look because there were aspects of the writing that I did enjoy. This story just fell a little short for me overall.

Mini Review: You May Now Kill The Bride by Kate Weston

Title: You May Now Kill The Bride

Author: Kate Weston

Publisher: Random House Trade

Pages: 352 pages

Publication date: May 14, 2024

Intro (Goodreads synopsis)

The bride-to-be drops dead at her bachelorette weekend, with all of her bridesmaids as suspects for her murder, in this wry thriller full of deadly twists and characters you'll love to hate.
Who will be left standing when the bouquet is thrown?

Lauren, Saskia, Dominica, Farah and Tansy have been best friends since grade school. They wonder if that was the last time they all actually liked each other. As adults, their lives have splintered. Farah is engaged and is fast becoming a complete bridezilla. Dominica's a successful divorce attorney with no time for anything but work. Tansy runs a vegan cafe and is preparing for a shotgun marriage to awful Ivan. Lauren has had a total “failure to launch” in her career and love life, consumed by a man who has spent years stringing her along. Saskia has married into wealth and a different circle of friends in a fancy part of London. Some days it seems that the only thing holding the group together is an event that happened in their youth twenty years ago—an incident they’ve all sworn secrecy about to protect each other.

When the group is reunited at Tansy’s bachelorette-cum-wellness-retreat weekend, it doesn’t take long for old grudges to surface. Then the bride-to-be chokes to death on a poisoned drink, and all of the bridesmaids are suspects.

Kate Weston explores the complexities of female friendship in this searingly funny, page-turning thriller. One of these bridesmaids may be a killer, and the group had better watch their sash-covered backs, because your oldest friends aren’t always your closest…

My thoughts

I think you'll like this book if you're trying to find a quick story that you're not going to take super seriously. I really wouldn't say that any of the characters were particularly likeable, but I was just interested enough in the shenanigans that the women got up to that I kept reading through until the end, and overall I had a good time. If you are a fan of Young Rich Widows (review here) or other humorous women's fiction, you'll probably enjoy this read.

Her Pretty Lies by Angela Henry

Title: Her Pretty Lies

Author: Angela Henry

Pages: 288

Publisher: Storm Publishing

Publication date: May 3 2024

Intro (Goodreads synopsis)

The paramedics tell me I’m in shock as they load the body bag into the ambulance.

Only days ago, I had everything. A man I wanted to marry. A prestigious fellowship for graduate school. A perfect new apartment. I’m a psychology student. I should have known she was hiding something from the start…Now I’m shivering under a foil blanket wondering how my life became a nightmare.

And when the paramedics check me over, it’s not concern I see on their faces. It’s fear.

They think I did this. They think I killed her…

My thoughts

This book disappointed me a little. I love a fast paced thriller, so I was excited when I got my hands on this one, but at times the plot became so out there and ridiculous that I feel like it read more like a YA fanfiction rather than a thriller meant for an adult audience. It feels like certain mature themes like that of sex and explicit language were inserted for adult marketing, but otherwise the overall plot is very YA which I was not what I was hoping for.

If you're looking for a serious thriller to cozy up with soon, this isn't one that I would recommend, but if you're looking for a fast paced thriller you could probably get through in a day or so, this would be an okay one to try. 

Sacrificial Animals by Kailee Pedersen

Title: Sacrificial Animals

Author: Kailee Pedersen

Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Pages: 320

Publication date: August 20, 2024

*ARC received from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. 

Intro (Goodreads synopsis)

Inspired by Kailee Pedersen's own journey being adopted from Nanning, China in 1996 and growing up on a farm in Nebraska, this rich and atmospheric supernatural horror debut explores an ancient Chinese mythology.

The last thing Nick Morrow expected to receive was an invitation from his father to return home. When he left rural Nebraska behind, he believed he was leaving everything there, including his abusive father, Carlyle, and the farm that loomed so large in memory, forever.

But neither Nick nor his brother Joshua, disowned for marrying Emilia, a woman of Asian descent, can ignore such summons from their father, who hopes for a deathbed reconciliation. Predictably, Joshua and Carlyle quickly warm to each other while Nick and Emilia are left to their own devices. Nick puts the time to good use and his flirtation with Emilia quickly blooms into romance. Though not long after the affair turns intimate, Nick begins to suspect that Emilia’s interest in him may have sinister, and possibly even ancient, motivations.

Punctuated by scenes from Nick’s adolescent years, when memories of a queer awakening and a shadowy presence stalking the farm altered the trajectory of his life forever, Sacrificial Animals explores the violent legacy of inherited trauma and the total collapse of a family in its wake.

My thoughts

I had such high hopes for this book. I love atmospheric horror. I adore when the atmosphere itself feels like a character. Like a presence. And I really enjoyed finding these devices in this story. 

What didn't work for me in this story was mostly the writing style. I feel as though the prose really bogged the story down at times and the plot felt very sluggish. I found myself getting bored waiting for something to actually happen. It is well over the halfway mark that the plot actually starts to really get moving, and in my opinion, even what was meant to be the climax of the story wasn't enough for me to justify reading through so many slow points. 

The author also chooses not to use quotation marks to identify dialogue which I respect as a stylistic choice, but their were instances where it was difficult to differentiate between what was dialogue and what wasn't. 

Overall this book wasn't totally my cup of tea, but it did have aspects that I enjoyed, so I would say that if you enjoy atmospheric horror and are okay with a slower story, I would give this a shot.

First Line Friday (23): The Dinner by Herman Koch

First Line Friday is a bookish tag hosted over at Abstract Books that is used to showcase your favourite first lines of books.

There really is something to be said about a good first line, and I'm going to be using this tag from now on to showcase my current read's first lines.

My current read this week is The Dinner by Herman Koch.

We were going out to dinner. I won't say which restaurant, because next time it might be full of people who've come to see whether we're there.

Goodreads synopsis

It's a summer's evening in Amsterdam, and two couples meet at a fashionable restaurant for dinner. Between mouthfuls of food and over the polite scrapings of cutlery, the conversation remains a gentle hum of polite discourse - the banality of work, the triviality of the holidays. But behind the empty words, terrible things need to be said, and with every forced smile and every new course, the knives are being sharpened.

Each couple has a fifteen-year-old son. The two boys are united by their accountability for a single horrific act; an act that has triggered a police investigation and shattered the comfortable, insulated worlds of their families. As the dinner reaches its culinary climax, the conversation finally touches on their children. As civility and friendship disintegrate, each couple show just how far they are prepared to go to protect those they love.

Tautly written, incredibly gripping, and told by an unforgettable narrator, The Dinner promises to be the topic of countless dinner party debates. Skewering everything from parenting values to pretentious menus to political convictions, this novel reveals the dark side of genteel society and asks what each of us would do in the face of unimaginable tragedy.

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I'm coming up to the last hundred or so pages of this novel, so my review should be out soon! You can add The Dinner to your TBR here!

The Last Girl Left by A.M. Strong and Sonya Sargent

Title: The Last Girl Left

Authors: A.M. Strong, Sonya Sargent

Publisher: Thomas & Mercer

Expected publication date: April 23, 2024

*ARC received from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review

Intro

Five years have passed since one terrifying night left Tessa the only survivor of the massacre that killed three of her friends, and Tessa hasn't gone one day without thinking about it. Her life as she knew it stopped the night Patrick Moyer killed her friends and left her for dead, but Tessa knows she can't live her life like this forever. Paranoid, jumping at shadows, and carrying a bat around her sister's house for protection. She needs to confront the past to be able to put it behind her, so she books a one month stay at the exact vacation house she was staying at with her friends the night they died.

When things start going bump in the night, Tessa would love to blame it on her paranoia, but she can't shake the feeling that something is off on Cassadaga Island, and she can't shake the feeling that someone is with her. Watching her. And she doesn't think she'll be lucky enough to be left alive a second time.

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This book was just okay for me. It had an interesting premise and I loved the setting. I think the authors did a great job with the atmosphere. A secluded, mostly closed down island in November is a great place to start a thriller and I really enjoyed that aspect of it.

There were, however, a few areas that missed the mark for me. I didn't find Tessa to be a particularly interesting protagonist, and her inner monologue was a bit on the repetitive side. In some ways I understand, because Tessa is stuck in her fears, but the content starts to feel dry early on in the story. The story also takes a long time to really start rolling, and that felt repetitive as well. Nothing really starts happening until the last 75 pages or so, so certain parts of the novel felt like filler that the novel didn't need, and I personally didn't feel like the reveal at the end was shocking enough to warrant the drawn out portions.

Overall, this novel felt a little bit predictable and the pacing wasn't my favourite but if you're looking for a thriller to read through in a weekend, this book may be worth picking up.