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This review contains spoilers.
Falling is a shallow thriller that heavily relies on overused tropes and stereotypes to tell a by-the-books story of a plane being hijacked by terrorists: full of one-note characters and predictable twists, the novel is also marred by a strong reluctance to delve into its own themes.
The book opens with a shocking scene full of death, dismemberment, and despair. “WHEN THE SHOE DROPPED INTO her lap the foot was still in it,” it starts. At first, it seems to be an in medias res opening, as it shows a plane whose side has been blown up, its passengers dead or heavily hurt. A woman believes her husband was shot by someone, but the narrator [...]
The Fireman is a suspenseful thriller that is deeply concerned about the ambivalence of tribal behavior: the story’s fantastical elements amplify the positive side of the powerful feeling of “belonging”, but also warn us of its many dangers.
The story revolves around an apocalyptic pandemic. There’s a spore called Dragonscale that marks the person’s skin with strange stripes and eventually makes their body go up in flames. People can go on for months without triggering spontaneous combustion, but a painful death by fire is just a matter of time – and stress.
The protagonist is Harper Grayson, a school nurse who lives with her husband Jakob. [...]
Written by Evie Wyld, All the Birds, Singing is at first a powerful novel that uses its protagonist’s fears and anxieties to work with themes such as misogyny and feminism in modern society. The book, however, eventually starts to contradict itself, abandoning its main themes in favor of an empty twist.
Jake White is the protagonist of the story. She lives alone on a British island, on a farm isolated from society. Her company consists only of a dog, called Dog, and her flock of sheep. During the night, however, the sheep are being attacked by some huge creature that tears them apart. As she tries to unravel this mystery, Jake still has to deal with the traumas of her past and [...]
Written by Dan Chaon, Await Your Reply tries to raise questions about identity, but unfortunately forgets to develop them, deciding instead to focus its attention on a boring group of shallow, static characters.
The story is told through the eyes of three main characters: we follow Lucy’s point of view, a student who ran away with her history professor, George, with the promise of getting rich; but also the young Ray, who discovers he is adopted and, after running away from home, finds his biological father and enters the world of crime; and finally, we have the bitter Miles, who is searching for his twin brother, Hayden, and one day acquires new clues as to his [...]
The latest supernatural crime thriller by Stephen King, The Outsider, has a great start, pushing its characters to their limits, making them face questions regarding the limits of reason and, paradoxically, the terrible consequences of acting based on emotions alone. Its second half, however, brings the pacing to a halt, with the introduction of an uninteresting supernatural creature that does more harm than good to the story.
The novel begins with a boy, Frank Peterson, being found dead in the woods of a small town, where everyone knows everyone, with his throat shredded to pieces, his body violated by a dead branch and covered in semen. An eyewitness confirms that she saw [...]
The Miniaturist is a historical novel disguised as a mystery one: its real aim is not to explore the enigma that the title character represents, but to present and criticize the Dutch society of the early 17th century.
The protagonist is Petronella Oortman, or Nella, a young woman who marries a successful merchant she doesn’t know, named Johannes Brandt, and goes on to live with him in Amsterdam. Her new life, however, is not as she had imagined. Being constantly ignored by her husband and finding in her sister-in-law a hostile figure, Nella only feels comfortable around her wedding gift: a detailed dollhouse that faithfully represents the rooms where she now lives in. [...]