Enjoyable thriller but not the first one I would grab/recommend. The story felt a little flat compared to others in the genre.

G. M. Malliet is, perhaps, best known for her series of mysteries about Max Tudor. He is a vicar in a small parish in England. Max has been the subject of seven books.

Weycombe is not part of the series. This novel tells the story of an American who marries a titled Brit. The two live in a wealthy, gated community. But, of course, all is not well. When a realtor is murdered, a rattled Jill wants to find out what happened. What does she discover?

I did not enjoy this book as much as I had hoped that I would. Other readers let me know what you thought.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher. All opinions are my own.

When I ask for recommendations for mystery books, G.M. Malliet is a name that comes up frequently. I was excited to finally read something by this author, and the premise is really juicy. The execution just wasn't there for me, though. The main character, Jillian, is not at all sympathetic, and her inner ramblings make the dialogue stutter and lose meaning. The pace does pick up in the latter part of the book, but by that time, I was not invested at all. The book could have benefitted from a shorter length and some sharp editing.
2 stars

I have heard such glowing praise for this author, that I was expecting to like this book more than I did. The cover and the blurb were very enticing, but I found that they were both somewhat misleading.

I expected an Agatha Christie type mystery set in an idyllic location - what I got was a modern "Big Little Lies" type novel complete with status snobbery, infidelity, and back-stabbing.

The book's beginning held great promise with a body found near a riverbank. From there it evolved into a one woman's investigations into the murder of her neighbour. However... she digresses so much off topic that I almost forgot at times about the murder she was supposedly investigating. She intends to write a book about the murder and investigation with the hopes that it will revive her career.

The setting was ideal and picturesque. The murder victim was an unlikable woman who garnered little sympathy.

This novel was written using a single narrator.  The sleuth, our narrator/protagonist, Jillian White, came across as shallow, judgemental, and condescending. When I should have felt sorry for her (when she was treated badly by her husband), all I could think was that she deserved it.

I did enjoy some of the humour within the book, though at times I found it held a nasty edge.

I had feared that this would be a 2 star read for me, but then at about 80% through the book, it really picked up with more attention given to the murder and the causes behind it. The last few chapters brought my score up to 3 stars.

I liked the writing, so would read another book by this author to see what all the fuss was about. However, I cannot recommend "Weycombe" as a must-read. At best it was just mediocre...

I really wanted to love this book unfortunately I found it really hard to connect with the story due to such a slow start. There was a lot of background information in the first half if the story and unfortunately I found it hard to keep interested. The second half was better though.

I so wanted to like this one, The premise is great, but it didn't deliver. I can't really put my finger on what I don't like. Maybe it's the tone or the setting or the characters, but overall it was just a meh read for me.

This was my first G.M. Malliet novel and I had trouble getting into it so much so that I didn't finish the book. I am sorry to say i can't recommend it for that reason, but I am honored to have had the chance to read it as a reviewer.

. .

I have enjoyed each and every book written by this author. I look forward to the next book by G.. M. Mallet.

I started this book and couldn't get into it after about 15% of the way in. The writing style was not for me, but may be for other readers.

The story started off with a bang, then gradually began to die. There is lots of humour but after awhile
it became tedious. I think the book would have been far better if the length of same had been condensed. Liked the main character at the start but despised her at the end.

I enjoy a good English village cozy and this was perfection.
The village description is done in great detail and the sleuth is a mystery lovers delight. I enjoy the attention to detail of this author who draws upon psychological traits of the suspects. A welcome refreshing change from the fast paced mysteries.

Atmospheric and witty. Interesting take on the traditional English village mystery, well executed by an author who clearly respects the genre

<http://freshfiction.com/review.php?id=64355>

American expat Jillian White and her landed husband have moved into an exclusive village in England. Not just anyone can live in Weycombe. It takes a certain type of person, and a certain amount of money to land behind those gates. 

Jillian is currently at odds--she was laid off from her job at the BBC, interviewing people to potentially be in true crime reenactments--and her husband is starting to wonder when she'll get another job. Not overly motivated to find something but not really happy being at home all the time either, she's taken to seven-mile walks in the mornings. It on one of these walks that she notices her neighbor and real estate agent Anna lying in the grass near the river, clearly no longer alive.

She immediately calls the police, but there is so little malicious crime in Weycombe that a single policeman answers, sure he's going to put Jillian's mind at ease that her friend is just fine. However, he takes one look at Anna's body and knows that he misjudged the situation. Shortly, a team of officers and crime scene personnel are at hand, collecting all the information they can find. 

Jillian is a prime witness, and as a bored housewife with a background in something close to journalism, she wonders if this is her chance to write the book that will change her life. So like any good armchair detective, she starts making the rounds to collect all the information she can. As Jillian's marriage slowly unravels, as she discovers all the dirty gossip of what Anna was into (and who had been into her), as she makes her notes into how the rich live, she finds herself pulled into a mystery that may be more than she bargained for. 

There is nothing I like more than a good cozy mystery, except maybe a tale of secrets and lies among friends and family. One of the best things about Weycombe is that I don't have to choose. It's a little bit Agatha Christie (or maybe Agatha Raisin, if you're an M.C. Beaton fan) and a little bit Liane Moriarty. And it is one hundred percent G.M. Malliet, one of my new favorite mystery writers. I haven't read her other novels yet (although I did pick one up recently on my weekly bookstore tour), and I hear that this is a departure from her other, more typical cozies. But I don't care. The quality of her writing means I will follow her just about anywhere she wants to go. 



Galleys for Weycombe were provided by Midnight Ink through NetGalley, with many thanks.

I have read other books by G. M. Malliet and was happy to see a new character in a new mystery. I enjoy the English Village setting and the fact that the main character, Jillian, is a transplanted American adds a nice twist. This becomes a case of don't ever judge a book by its cover, in this case neither the Village nor Jillian's marriage are what they seem at first glance. I won't say more because I don't want to give anything away, only that it was a very satisfying, full of twist and turns, mystery.

Lost a star due to the excruciating slow build up to what was a rather surprising outcome.

"what the villain always knows, ultimately, is not why, but why not?"

A tale of murder, lust, revenge, love, money and one woman's desire. Very cleverly written if not slightly over indulgent in the finer detail, this first person narrative is the story of a bored Stepford-Wives style housewife from a small gated English community who finds herself in the middle of a murder investigation.

Unfortunately the story is rather long in the telling before finally picking up the pace and delivering a twist in which all is revealed in the final pages.

Very clever reference to observations made by Agatha Christie's Miss Marple: "one does see so much evil in a village ..." - and very applicable in "Weycombe" by GM Malliet.

I really liked Max Tudor and Saint Just mysteries so my expectations were quite high. All these book were really page-turners, great plots and a lot of humour.
Unfortunately this book did not meet my expectation. For me it was like travelling in a grey landscape with lots of secrets, dramas and long discussion on the sociological side. The heroine sometimes is witty and sometimes is just acid.
It could have been a wonderful reading but it ended being a bit boring and was really hard to finish this book
Many thanks to Netgalley and Midnight ink for giving me the chance to review this book.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

This the first book I've read by Malliet and I had high hopes with comparisons from various readers to Agatha Christie.

I got about 100 pages into the book and had to put it down. It's too much like Girl on the Train but without the excitement. And too many things I can't get past, the biggest being a narrator who's a total jerk. An American expat in England who uses far too many English phrases, yet detests the town she lives in and what her life has become after marrying a privileged aristocrat. It's like being forced to listen to the drunk girl at the party who just lost her job and her boyfriend and is totally depressed but turns to passive aggressive sarcasm as a crutch. From the way she describes herself she sound like someone I wouldn't want to live with or date either - a wreck inside and out - but most importantly Self-Centered and rude, but not in a funny or fun way.

The other unbearable aspect of this book is the number of side-stories she tells. At first I thought tis meandering would lead to relevant information about the crime, but you find out they're just side stories that highlight her hate of the town and herself. A woman died. Her husband has a staggering disability. Her step-son is a shattered soul. Yet the narrator spends more time whining about herself and being mean about the victim.

Perhaps Malliet was making an attempt at a realistic flawed person. Trying to capture the unreliable narrator. But it doesn't work. It sucks and it's difficult to read because it's just mean. No thanks.

I gave it two stars because it was written well, just the content and meandering that I couldn't bear.

Weycombe by G.M. Malliet
Weycombe
by G.M. Malliet (Goodreads Author)
30817744
Sandy *The world could end while I was reading and I would never notice* Jones's review Oct 16, 2017 · edit
really liked it
bookshelves: 2017, murder-mystery, netgalley-arc, new-to-me-author, 4-star

EXCERPT: What happened to Anna could so easily have been an accident. She could have been running flat out on her chubby legs, minding her own business, when some solicitor speeding by on his way to his office in Walton-on-Thames, anonymous in his ventilated helmet and ubiquitous black bike shorts, pushed her off the party, sending her rolling downhill and breaking her neck. That time of year, the path could be slick with wet fallen leaves. She might simply have slipped and fallen on her head.

That is certainly how it could have happened. Except that of course she was murdered, dead before her body came to rest at the edge of the river.

THE BLURB: Weycombe is the chocolate-box village of everyone’s dreams. For American Jillian White, a gated life of pleasure and comfort with her titled English husband was a fantasy come true.

But the murder of a local estate agent mars the village’s so-pretty surface. Are people actually dying to live in Weycombe? Jill investigates, piecing together clues along the snaking paths and winding lanes of her adopted village. She knows truth has many versions, depending on who is doing the telling. And that few can be trusted in Weycombe, where nothing is as perfect as it seems.

MY THOUGHTS: After reading the synopsis, I thought I was in for a cosy Agatha Christie like read. But it seems G.M. Malliet is very clever. She has written a chameleon of a novel. To start with, she uses her acerbic wit to paint a portrait of life in an English village. Even at slightly over half way, I made the following comment- "This is so not about murder. It is an amusing, sometimes laugh out loud hilarious, tongue-in-cheek, slightly bitchy poke at life in an English village. The murder is merely the vehicle."

Yes, I was well and truly sucked in. For, almost without me noticing, the story turned in on itself in the second half and became something far more sinister. This was definitely not Christie!

This is a book that I read with a smile on my face, especially at the end. Although I picked up the odd hiccup with continuity, this was an uncorrected ARC and so I would expect these minor imperfections to have been corrected before Weycombe is unleashed on the public.

All in all, a very enjoyable read that kept my interest from the first page to the last. I have added all this authors other works to my reading list.

Thank you to Midnight Ink via Netgalley for providing a digital copy of Weycombe for review. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own. Please refer to my Goodreads.com profile page or the 'about' page on sandysbookaday.wordpress.com for an explanation of my rating system. This review and others are also published on https://wordpress.com/post/sandysbookaday.wordpress.com/466