Thank you so much for the opportunity to read this book. I have now read a number of Matt Haig books and his style is not for me.. Did not finish @ 15%

Matt Haig is by far my favourite authors so to have this through Netgalley was amazing. He did not disappoint and I really enjoyed this book. I have read all of Matts books so far

Apologies, this book was not what I was expecting. Having read all of Matt Haig’s more recent books and loved them I assumed I would enjoy this too but unfortunately it didn’t hold my attention.Thanks to the publisher for the ARC.

I usually live Matt Haigs books. Unfortunately this one don't hit the mark for me. A but of a disappointment.

I really enjoyed Matt Haig's The Humans as well as his non-fiction books so I was hoping for something similar with The Dead Father's Club. I really enjoyed that the novel was written from Phillip's perspective and overall, really liked the book.

In The Dead Fathers Club, Matt Haig draws parallels with Shakespeare's Hamlet in a strange and surprising novel. Not one of his best works but still worth a read.

I read How To Stop Time last year so was very excited to see this on netgalley, and it did not disappoint! Must go out and read all of Matt Haig's books now...

Matt Haig is the master of truthful story-telling. In The Dead Father’s Club, inspired by Hamlet, young Philip Noble is struggling to make sense of anything since his father died. When his father’s brother Uncle Alan starts to make a move on his mum, he is visited by his dad’s ghost, who declares he was murdered by Alan and now Philip must seek revenge. Haig weaves a clever and sensitive tale, which is enjoyable but doesn’t quite ignite as he other novels have.

A somewhat sad and thoughtful story loosely based on Shakespeare's Hamlet.

The narrator of the story is an 11 year old boy in a similar style to that of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime or Wonder. In order to give the reader the impression of a young narrator the decision was made to have almost no punctuation in the book. This is most obvious in the lack of speech marks and apostrophes. While I totally understand why that choice was made, it did sometimes make the prose a little confusing. Also, I would perhaps expect a young child - maybe an 8 year old - to not include punctuation but Philip is in secondary school so it does sometimes seem like he is made younger than he really is.

The story itself was very interesting. Although there is a supernatural element to the story it is really more about themes of loss, modern families and coming of age.

While not my favourite offering from Matt Haig, it was still a very enjoyable little book and he continues to be one of my favourite authors.

Thank you very much to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review

I really appreciated this was a retelling of Hamlet and normally Matt Haig writes books that I get obsessed about but this wasn't one of them. I read most of it but got to the end and realised i just didn't care about the outcome as much as i should at that point.

Great book! well written characters with a hint of ridiculous and as well as foreboding. Wish it had gone on a bit longer and been more wrapped up, even though I think that was intentional, I'd love to hear how the story progresses. Shakespearean hints took me too long to pick up on but this was just as gripping as any Shakespeare play

Not for me this time. I’ve loved Matt Haig ‘s books in the past but I found this one hard going. Funny at times but I lost interest a quarter of a way in.

A funny quick read. A bit long in places but humorous overall. I would probably read more by this author.

Thank you to Netgalley for my copy.

Philip Noble is eleven and his father has just died in a car crash. He is grieving deeply when his dead dad appears as a ghost and tells him that Philip's uncle killed him and is after Philip's mum and the pub she now owns and runs. Dad tells Philip that he must get revenge on his uncle by killing him, otherwise Dad is doomed to be a ghost forever. The story sounds horrific when describing it, but there is quite a lot of black humour in there and some amusing side characters. The story is written in the first person from Philip's point of view and in a child-like style, which I'm not sure worked that well. It was a little too overdone. Aside from that, the book is easy to read and very intriguing. Funny and sad.
I read afterwards that it is a rewrite of Hamlet, but I'm not very familiar with the play and didn't pick up on that.

I had been keen to read a Matt Haig book for a while, after hearing fantastic reviews of his other books. So I jumped at the chance to read this, especially after reading the description.

What a very unique premise for a book this was. A young boy of eleven loses his father, only to be confronted by his ghost. Ghost Dad tells him that he must get revenge for his father's death, and haunts the boy until he starts getting himself into trouble. Of course, nobody else knows his dad is still around. It's hard to review this without giving the whole story away, but I don't want to start telling the whole story as I don't want to ruin it for anyone else!

At first I was completely weirded out by the almost non-existent grammar and punctuation in the book, but as the book was meant to have been written by an eleven-year-old boy I understood why the author chose to write it that way. Even so, it took some getting used to! Especially for someone like me, the Superintendent of the Grammar Police.

I did enjoy reading this book. It was well written from a story-telling point of view, and there were quite a few unexpected turns. I liked the characters, and the author's idea of ghosts was an interesting and almost plausible one. I haven't heard a similar version before, so I assume that it was a completely novel theory which worked excellently in this story. The description of the ghosts and what happened to them was detailed enough for me to be able to picture them clearly and imagine the unknown world beyond. The living characters were also well written and their emotions and hardships were right there on the page, particularly the turmoil of the poor protagonist.

Overall I would say this book was totally out there, but also very heartfelt and dramatic, and that's why I enjoyed it. I'm not sure who I would recommend this book to, but I would definitely look out for the author again. Maybe one of my crazier friends...

Matt Haig’s wonderful take on Hamlet-meets-Patrick Ness’ A Monster Calls is an absolute delight to read – but be prepared to have your heart melted and broken and deliciously/masochistically destroyed in a variety of ways. It’s the tale of a young boy, son to a pub landlord who dies under suspicious circumstances, an anxious little chap struggling with the loss of his father while having to navigate the tricky seas of a dodgy uncle honing in on his mother and the inheritance… if that wasn’t enough, he speaks to the ghost of his father who demands revenge and thinks up plots to stop the union of Dodgy Uncle and Mum. It’s an incredible burden to place on a kid’s shoulders, and of course young Philip feels overwhelmed, but his sense of duty, love for his father and fear for his mother leave him little choice than to follow suit. In his young mind, it’d be betrayal to go against his parents’ will, but even more so, to deny his father’s last wish. More so, to have to save his father from a fate worse than death.
It’s an intense contradictory mix of the inner world of a grieving child, of loyalty, of bravery, of grief and of weights a child’s shoulder shouldn’t carry. Even the least maternal soul may well go all protective and parental on the young protagonist. And the twist in the outcome is just as unexpected as life’s turns itself.

This is a reimagining of Hamlet, one of my favourite Shakespeare plays, and as well as reading a cracking and innovative interpretation, I had a lot of fun trying to spot my favourite characters. Actually, tell the truth, I got a bit wrapped up in the story as it was unfolding, I actually failed to initially spot R&G, kicking myself when I eventually realised!
Anyway, Philip Noble is still grieving for his father who died recently in a car accident. He lives with his mum at the Castle and Falcon pub but they are both struggling in their own ways. Then his father appears to him as a ghost and spins a very interesting tale. He tells Philip of The Dead Fathers Club and that it appears he is stuck in limbo until his death can be avenged before his next birthday. With Philip's uncle Alan muscling in on both the pub and his brother's widow, it's not hard for Philip to believe his dead father when he says that rather than the accident everyone thinks, his death was actually murder and that Philip is the only one who can help his ghost move on. But Philip is only 11 and has a whole host of other distractions, can he help his father and save his mother from his uncle, or is there more to the whole sorry tale?
OK, so I know I am not the target audience for this story by about 30 or more years, but I really enjoyed it. I found Philip to be on the whole quite credible and I loved the descriptions of his everyday life and how they were affected by what was going on at home. He "played" a very credible Hamlet insofar as his mental state was concerned and I especially liked his interactions and relationship with Leah.
It did take a while to get into the way that the book was written and I appreciate that others could struggle with this so I would recommend trying a sample first just in case. But you have to remember that the narrator is only eleven and so the way the story is told has to reflect this, and it does, very well.
It's not all doom and gloom though, there are some very funny and also some rather touching moments to be found throughout. As with R&G, who reflect their Shakespearean counterparts very well.
The ending was the thing that threw me a bit. I am a bit of a fan of neater endings. I do like a bit left open but the way this one finished didn't quite cut it for me. I guess that maybe it was designed to get children thinking and the lack of certain conclusions would lend very nicely to some really great discussion. Sadly, this approach isn't really for me, although I do have my own interpretation which obviously spoilers prevent me sharing here.
All in all, a lovely quirky book which I did enjoy despite being a bit overage for it. My thanks go to the Publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read this book.

Hmmm. So on the one hand, this was an interesting modern take on Hamlet. Not a complete copy of the story, but there were enough nice nods to the original. But for me there were two fundamental problems which wrecked the story for me.
1. Hamlet becomes far creepier as a concept when the 'Hamlet' character is 11. I liked the ambiguity about if the ghost was real or not, but there was zero reason to want to trust him when he was urging his son who was still a child to kill his uncle. Combined with the ending, it was altogether a bit too bleak as a result.

2. The simplistic writing style as though Philip had written the story was quite clever and worked for a while. But after a while, it really started to grate on me, as it made how young Philip was very visible through the story, increasing the horror at what his dead father was expecting him to do.

I must admit that I am a huge fan of Matt Haig and this book did not disappoint. Another enjoyable read.

'The Dead Father's Club' by Matt Haig is an interesting take on Shakespeare's 'Hamlet' but I really disliked the writing style. Although I understand that the narrator is an eleven year-old, it was written exactly as 'The Room' by Emma Donoghue is, who's narrator is five years old. I really can't engage with novels that are written in a childlike manner, and this in particular just struck me as too childlike for someone of that age.
Some of my favourite novels have children as the main characters ('Coraline' and 'The Book of Lost Things') but sadly this one wasn't for me.

~Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to review this title~