A puzzle for the reader: Can you determine who is telling the truth sifting through emails from a cast of many characters? This was a clever construction delivered by author Hallett in her first published book. I am not a patient person, nor am I tolerant of busy social interactions and suspicious relationships based on community links as well as theatre participation and/or work associations. So...that is the basis of the book, and I felt annoyed sifting through emails/messages.
Crowdfunding, theatre activities and promotions, medical misleads...all elements to consider as the reader attempts to determine if any of the characters are real or truthful.

The style of this is completely unique! When I started reading it, I fell in love with the format! So neat. And it made for a quick pace and hard to put down. There is no traditional writing and conversation, it is all emails, texts, letters, etc. That being said, I think that having some “traditional” pieces would have helped a lot. I was confused for almost the entirety of the book and didn’t even feel relieved in the end. I found the characters frustrating but did feel the need to finish. I wouldn’t call this a thriller, but more of a mystery. I did like the idea that the reader is meant to be solving it based on all the communication, but it didn’t feel like a thrilling plot. I do think a decent chunk could have been cut out to make for a more condense, quick pace.

I’m not even sure how to do a synopsis for this one. I think it’s worth checking out for the fact of how uniquely it is written. And those who enjoy detective novels and mysteries may like this one a lot. Just go into it knowing it’s not a thriller.

Thank you to Atria for my advanced readers copy of this book!

Thank you so much to Netgalley and Atria for providing me this eARC of The Appeal. I found the format of this book, written entirely in emails, letters and text exchange to be completely unique and exciting. The exchanges put you, as the reader, in the detective seat to solve the crime alongside the detectives. The plot had several complex storylines that were well done but at times became confusing with so many characters and moving parts. I found the ending to perfectly wrap up the story, leaving no plot holes or questions left unanswered. I would round up to 3.5 stars and would recommend this if you’re looking for a crime fiction written in a very unique and fresh way.

3.5 Focus Is Everything Stars
* * * 1/2 Spoiler Free-A Quick Review
I like to think I have the temperament to read mystery/thrillers. And mostly I do. However, when I need to google what is an epistolary novel is...Then that might have been a clue as to the type of focus I would need to read this.

That is not to say this wasn't a strong story with a compelling type of experience for those who love lots of characters, detail, red herrings, and a twist or two. This takes a group of people with so many connections, a love of theater, a focus on a sick child, and the need to find funds for a cure, a murder, and then the suspicions of all the players with too many secrets to remain hidden.

If you are detailed loving, like to analyze motives, and pride yourself on being able to figure out things from seeds, hints, and actions by suspects, then this would be your thing.

The Appeal by Janice Hallett is her debut novel and its epistolary format may tempt amateur sleuths to work alongside the two junior lawyers tasked with sorting through emails, texts, newspaper clippings, social media activity, messages, letters, and police reports which make up the narrative of the book to answer the senior partner’s questions which change over time. As Olufemi (Femi) Hassan and Charlotte Holroyd read, took notes, and sorted through the various information, so did I. They are kept in the dark initially as to the true nature of the case and it is best that readers go in without all of the details as well.

A local theatre group, The Fairway Players, are getting ready for Arthur Miller’s play, All My Sons, when tragedy strikes the family of Martin Hayward, the director, and his wife, Helen, the play’s star. Their granddaughter has been diagnosed with a form of cancer. An experimental treatment costing a large amount of money may be the only thing to save her life. Their friends and colleagues support them by babysitting, dog-sitting, and fundraising. However, accusations, fights, and a dead body bring a mystery to life.

This book had a very large cast of characters that required notes as I attempted to uncover the truth and answer the senior partner’s questions. It’s the second book that I have read with an epistolary format in 2021 and it worked for me. Some of the correspondence is just gossip and others provide key information if one reads them carefully while others seem enigmatic or irrelevant. But are they? To my surprise, given the format of the narrative, suspense was built as details were revealed.

The plot is clever and somewhat convoluted, requiring more notes to keep things straight. The epistolary dialogue is well-crafted. Even the main characters become fully drawn and unforgettable. The last minute evidence added after an initial report back to the senior partner clarified some things. Did I get all of the questions answered correctly? No. However, I did arrive at several of the answers. How will you fare? Will you be able to pick out details and make the connections? Several themes were woven into the novel including social hierarchy, social exclusion, friendship, family, community, stress, obsession, jealousy, and much more. The others would be spoilers.

Overall, this was suspenseful with compelling characters that engaged my inner sleuth and kept me turning the pages. The occasional humor helped as well. It’s an impressive start for a debut novel. I am looking forward to reading more from this author. If you are looking for a mystery with twists, plenty of suspects, and lots of motives, then this is one you may want to check out.

Atria Books and Janice Hallett provided a digital ARC of this novel via NetGalley. This is my honest review. Opinions are mine alone and are not biased in any way. Publication date is currently set for January 25, 2022. This review was originally posted at Mystery and Suspense Magazine.

I was looking forward to read this when I saw it was an epistolary fiction book because those are my favorite. Unfortunately I had to put this one down after a few pages, it was a bit too slow paced for me and I was growing bored. I think it may have been because there was communication going back and forth between too many characters at once.

In the English village of Lockwood, there is a social hierarchy and the Haywards are on top, with their adult children and the MacDonald/Dearing families filling out the rest of what is, in a sense, a modern version of a royal court. The Haywards own the grand property The Grange, and they run a local theater group called The Fairway Players. Helen Hayward always gets the female lead, the rest of the court get the plum roles, and a few other spots are available for the commoners. Martin Hayward, the head of the family, chooses the plays and directs.

The play chosen this season is All My Sons. Unusually, there are newcomers to the cast. They are Sam (Samantha) and Kel Greenwood, who are also new to the village, having returned to England after spending several years doing hardship medical volunteer work in Africa. A work acquaintance of Sam’s, Issy Beck, has introduced the pair to The Fairways Players and persuaded the Greenwoods that even though they haven’t acted before, joining The Fairways Players will be a great way to meet people.

If you’ve ever been involved in local theater, you know it’s quite a study in human behavior. People drawn to the theater are often more emotionally driven, not always the most logical people or the easiest to corral into a good working team. And so it is here; a couple of competent people herding about a dozen actors and stage assistants. To add to the usual minor hubbub of the theater, soon after the announcement of this season’s cast, Martin Hayward announces that his two-year-old granddaughter has just been diagnosed with a very rare brain tumor and that her only hope for survival is an ruinously expensive new drug to be brought over from the US. The cast wants to help raise money for little Poppy’s cure, and immediately begin running off in multiple directions to do that.

So that’s the setup. The plot of the book is intriguingly presented as a collection of thousands of emails, text messages, handwritten notes and newspaper articles. Why? Because they constitute the litigation file presented by a senior law firm partner to two associates. The law firm represents one of The Fairways Players, in prison in connection with the death of another player. The partner believes the client is innocent and challenges the associates to find answers in this trove of material.

I’ve always enjoyed so-called epistolary novels, and this one uses the document trove well to introduce the characters, set the scene, and put the plot in motion. The emails quickly show that most of the characters are unreliable narrators, telling different stories to different recipients, and each writer telling the same story differently. This makes it a challenge for the junior lawyers and the reader to figure out what really happened up to the death, whodunnit, and why. Along the way, there is a good deal of humor provoked by the imperfections of communication within the document collection.

If you read the book, you should know one (non-spoiler) thing. The plot is not entirely about the death. There is a lot going on for the reader to puzzle out—a good thing, too, since the death doesn’t occur until well over halfway through the book. I wouldn’t describe this as a traditional fair-play mystery, in which all the clues are given that the reader needs to solve the crime, but I did feel like enough information was given for me to figure out some important plot issues.

I stayed up past my usual bedtime to finish the book, and I read 90% of it in a day. So that’s a form of recommendation. I did feel a little irritation in the middle about the repetitiveness of one character’s emails, but it didn’t make me want to quit reading.

An entertainingly different kind of English village mystery.

I really liked the plot/premise of the book, but the writing style and format threw me off. I understand why it was done, just not my cup of tea.

Thanks, Atria and NetGalley for a copy of this eARC in exchange for my review!

Omg this was so much fun. This is the perfect book for mystery lovers. The way the story was slowly revealed was so unique and engaging. The writing was perfect, as we got such a sense of each of the characters from simple emails and text messages. The story kept me guessing until the end.

I was lucky enough to be invited to read this, I’m not sure if I would have stumbled upon it otherwise.

I wasn’t sure how a story told only in correspondence would work: Would it be difficult to follow? Would it be hard to connect to the characters? Would it make sense?

No. No. Yes.

It took a little bit to follow who was who. I had to screenshot a list of characters and even then, there were others introduced along the way. But eventually the characters start to take shape. I was surprised to find myself getting a sense of who each of them were. The way the story is told wasn’t a hindrance, it was actually incredibly fun. Especially the random messages from side characters.

There’s so many little threads to follow. So many things I missed, a few things I managed to catch. But it was all very satisfying.

I didn't think I would finish this when I realized the entire book was reading emails and messages but the story kept building and pulled me all the way. New twists and turns on every page always pointing a new direction keeps one guessing all the way.

Thanks Netgalley for allowing me to read this book. I found myself getting bored reading this book. I could not get into the storyline or the many emails. I would have liked to see more of a interaction between the characters.

The Appeal

This book was a hard pass for me. I tried really hard to push through. But at 39%, I feel this is repetitive and I cannot fathom another 60% of emails.

This book clocks in at OVER 400 pages— of emails and texts. I’m sorry but no. And I found the characters to be insufferable. If I had to read another email from Issy and her obsessiveness…

Sorry to say I will not be picking this one up. If someone wants to DM me the ending, I’ll accept 😂

I enjoyed this take on a thriller written mostly in email format! Although, with a tagline of "One Murder. Fifteen Suspects." I would have expected things to happen a little quicker.

That being said, I was hooked and completely shocked by the ending!

I’m so sorry to say this was a struggle for me to get through from start to end. The format just didn’t work and I found it extremely confusing. Perhaps in a physical form rather than digital it may have worked better for me.

Between the format and the extremely large cast of characters I was just lost.

There are many positive reviews from those that loved this style of writing. I wish I could have been among them.

Thank you to NetGalley and Atria publishing for the ARC.

This was one juicy and fun whodunnit! I am not usually one for the drama, but The Appeal was full of it and I soaked up every page! This is an epistolary novel, told completely through letters between characters. To add a modern twist to that style, The Appeal is a mix of text messages, emails, voicemails and handwritten notes. I found this very entertaining to read and often humorous when one character would say something to another, then send a completely different message to someone else. You get to see just how the rumor mills turns.

Just as the synopsis states, all of the evidence is laid out before you, so you actually get the chance to solve the case yourself as the reader. The Appeal is so unique and perfect for any mystery lover. I honestly couldn't read this one fast enough, however the last 30 pages or so kind of slowed down as the two law students are conversing over their thoughts on the case and a lot of information is restated and rehashed. The final outcome is very good, however, it's scandalous but also completely believable and the evidence was there all along. I would recommend this book to just about anyone, I think many readers would enjoy it.

I had seen gushing reviews for this one all over Twitter from all of my book friends across the pond. Once it was available to us "Yankees" I was so excited!

The structure of this book is original and interesting. All of the entries are emails and investigative notes going back and forth between young attorneys tasked with reviewing emails between the townspeople of a small English town, in order to give their investigative opinion to their big boss, along with all the emails between the townspeople involved in the murder investigation.

Is my review confusing already? YES Haha - I'm just preparing you for this one. Is the story confusing? a little, YES Are there too many characters to keep track of? YES Did I still fly through the book intrigued and curious? YES! Would I recommend this one? YES

You know those books that start off and you think, ok, I'm going to easily figure out who the murderer is - but then the book goes down corridors and back alleys and you lose your way - and you have no idea how you got as far reading this book as you have without having any more knowledge about the murderer? Ok, that's how this one was for me. But I will tell you this - I loved looking at these people's lives through their emails to each other. I thought this story was about so much more than the murder. I'm not sure I even care who the murderer was. I LOVED these townspeople! There were so many times that I busted out laughing out loud. This story was full of humor and wit.

I don't feel like I even need to summarize this one because you can easily read that elsewhere. This review instead is about how fun and engaging this read was. How utterly original and intelligent.

Grab this one as soon as you can!

Thank you to NetGalley and Atria books for the advance copy to read and review! Pub date: 1.25.22

Told solely through emails and texts, this is not your traditional mystery.

For a good part of the story, it is unclear what the direction of the story might be. Two colleagues, Femi and Charlotte are presented with a series of documents from February 2018 to August 2019 from a number of citizens in a small English town. It is not clear if they even know what they are looking for. As the reader, we are merely given the same documents they are reviewing, as well as their messages to one another.

What these emails present is a very interesting study in human behavior, and how differently people write to one another, and how the town hierarchy impacts everyone's actions. The two main plot lines of the emails involve the production of the play All My Sons and the cancer diagnosis of a town member's child, Poppy. The latter being a central focus for the town as they launch a massive crowdfunding campaign to help raise money for her treatment.

As the crowdfunding events escalate, there are definitely some hints that things are not on the up and up. Is Poppy's family being manipulated for money? Or are they using fundraising to cover other personal expenses? I wasn't sure, but as I read, I began to distrust just about everyone.

Then, about halfway through the book, one key character dies. And you have to wonder, after reviewing all these messages, how almost everyone could be considered a suspect. There are some huge revelations that Femi and Charlotte sort out, which I never would have caught, and eventually the killer and their motives are revealed. Never would have put that all together, which I love.

While some parts of this story were a bit slow, the overall story was incredibly clever in how it was put together. If you love a good mystery, see if you can figure this one out!

Janice Hallett tells the story of The Appeal in various emails. There is a murder to solve and the clues are hidden throughout the text. This was an interesting concept and I found Ms Hallett's writing reminded me of an Agatha Christie novel. I want to thank NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for an early copy to review.

I received an advanced reader’s copy in exchange for an honest review

I loved this one. Very fast paced, had me turning pages as I tore through it – I had to see how it would end. The characters were well rounded and the narrative felt believable. Gave me chills. Solid five