I applaud authors for trying something new, something different...but this didn't work for me. At all. Instead of clever, the second-person, 4th-wall-breaking narrative came across as smarmy and pretentious, way too condescending and made me angry rather than intrigued.

There was a fantastic passage about authors who had rules they followed while writing and that Agatha Christie not only knew them all, but broke the whole lot of them. Unfortunately, every other time the story paused to break off into a mini essay on the history of mystery as a genre my mind wandered.

Ultimately this was a DNF -- I really wanted to champion this one but I had to call it quits.

Thank you to Knopf for letting me read WEST HEART KILL early. This one publishes on October 24.

The style of this book is either something you will love or hate. Unfortunately I hated it. I didn't want to pick it up ever. Maybe it's better on audio. Once it's released, I'll check out the audio from the library and report back.

Takes place over a long holiday weekend at an expansive private hunting club of the wealthy. Surprised me with twists, I didn’t see coming. Definitely not the usual murder mystery. At first I thought it was a bit odd. It’s like a a how-to-guide for writers inside a cleverly plotted whodunit. The more I got into it though, the more I enjoyed it, and I learned a lot about the mystery genre, one of my favorites. You read about its history; authors like Christie, Auden and Chandler to name a few; types like classic or locked room mysteries; and techniques of the trade like the dying message. Excellent writing and a unique concept take this murder mystery over the top. 5 stars

I finished reading "West Heart Kill" quite a while ago, and realized I hadn't left my review. When I looked at the summary for a refresher, I remembered why. This book "talks" to the reader in a manner that I found rather off-putting. Another reviewer used the word "self-referential," and that's exactly what it is. The author is doing more than telling a story; he is playing a game with his reader. And in some other novels, it really works. In this one, it doesn't, or at least it didn't for me.

I found myself skimming through the "lessons" interspersed between the story-telling chapters, because reading them was just frustrating and felt detracting. I enjoyed the storyline itself, about Detective Adam and his assignment to uncover what has been happening at the West Heart development. I would have enjoyed this more as a novella, i.e., without the game-play chapters.

3/5 stars

I tried but I couldn't get through this. The narration changes make things confusing and disrupts the flow of the book.. Overall everything is just chaotic and messy, the book does not flow and reads choppy.

This is presented in a highly unique style that made it difficult for me to connect with, not only the characters, but the story as a whole. I usually read a book from beginning to end within a couple of days if not hours but I found myself opening and closing this one in a battle to get it read. It was a bit exhausting for me. I believe there are readers who are going to love this style, but I’m looking for a more traditional read with great twists and not one that I have to work so hard to enjoy.

Thank you, NetGalley and Knopf, for providing me with a complimentary digital copy of this book for review.

West Heart Kill presents a captivating and unconventional approach to the murder mystery genre. Allow me to delve into the heart of the story itself. The investigation led by Adam McAniss compels me to question the motives of each couple and their children. None of the characters possess likable qualities, leaving everyone under suspicion. As a reader, my insatiable desire to unearth their hidden secrets intensifies.

However, the narrative style employed in this novel occasionally proves to be a distraction. Initially, an omniscient narrator emerges, which can be jarring when it begins to dictate my emotions. This point of view then shifts sporadically to a third-person perspective. Furthermore, the narrative sometimes pauses to provide insights into the realm of mystery writing and writers. While I appreciate these informative digressions, they impede the overall pace of the story. Lastly, the climactic revelation occurs within the confines of a play script, delving further into familial conflicts and financial issues.

West Heart Kill offers a murder mystery not bound by convention. It presents intriguing twists in its storytelling.

QUICK TAKE: I loved it. I think true fans of the whodunnit genre will love it. I think the ending will REALLY upset some people, but I was kinda into it (and I'm frankly still thinking about it). It's basically KNIVES OUT meets THE ICE STORM. Cool new author to keep an eye on.

{2.5/5}

CW: suicide, drug use, abuse, Nazis, death of a dog, mild gore/violence, some others

Read as an ARC via NetGalley. Book publishes October 24, 2023

I struggled with rating this book. I also struggled to finish it, but we’ll get to that in a moment. Normally, a book that is written decently but whose story I didn’t love, or a book whose story was amazing but had less than thrilling writing backing it up, would earn a 3. A 3 falls right in the middle of my 1-5 scale; it’s like a really comfy armchair with one leg too short—a tolerable experience, but not as good as it could have been. By writing standards, this book should have at least earned a 3. There’s no doubt in my mind that the author possesses an immense talent for putting together strings of words. It’s scattered all throughout the story, little bits and pieces of skill sitting right there on the page for you to notice and appreciate. But the actual execution of the story? It made me dread picking the book back up to finish.

I don’t even know that I can really give an accurate synopsis of the story because I’m not entirely sure what it really ended up being. It was supposed to be a “rich people getaway whodunit” set in the 1970’s, but it ended up feeling more like “a study of mystery as a genre” rather than an actual mystery story.

The narrative style is what really threw off my groove with this book. I’m sure some people will really enjoy it, but I just found it irritating. The narrator changes throughout, sometimes as the detective, predominately as the author, occasionally as another member of the character list (though not identified). The actual story is interspersed with asides that document the history of how ‘mystery’ developed as a genre, or on the origins of the word ‘murder,’ or innumerable other things. While an interesting tactic for turning the reader’s attention to a lot of possibilities at once, it severely threw off the flow of the story, and if you were to take out all the asides we’d be left with an incredibly short tale. Unfortunately, the tone that these in-between scenes were conveyed in also went from ‘snobby, but it works’ to ‘incredibly irritating’ quite rapidly. It felt like a remote surveillance by the author of their own story, facetious and high-handed enough to border on purple prose without fully crossing the line, that somehow works as a plot device and yet pulls you out of the flow of the story at the same time.

I wanted to love the story, I really did. For me, though, it ended up feeling like someone had taken the bare bones of detective story, filled it with an incredibly unlikable and one-dimensional cast, cut and paste background research in at random intervals, rounded it out with an altogether unsatisfying conclusion, and tied everything up with discordantly well executed writing. Personally, this wasn’t a favorite, but if experimental fiction is your thing, and you’re okay with a little fictional whiplash, this might be the book for you.

Lots and lots and lots of potential that missed the mark at every turn for me. The history of the genre interwined with a murder mystery is an excellent idea. And I am all for bending the rules when it comes to the storytelling, so the non-traditional narrative style worked for me in many places. But while the author made interesting and discussion-worthy points about the are of creating a mystery novel, the novel itself got in the way. Or maybe it was the other way around? Either way the characters mean nothing to us, and the conclusions feel bland.

The author works so hard to create the framework they forgot to fill it in. It often felt like he relied on the tricks to mask the lack of actual storytelling. More time was needed on developing the characters and less time telling the reader what they were thinking. (This literally happens throughout the book.) What I was actually thinking was "Give us more Emma!" she is the most interesting character in the book, and her moments with the Detective were the most enjoyable for me. Like in so many books before, the women are the best parts and know all the secrets, but are ignored in order to highlight the pursuits of men.

We get it, the author is clever. I just wished he had spent less time trying to convince of us that. I wanted to hang out with and know more from the characters of West Heart. The young boy who has secret access, binoculars, and a meticulous map? Let's get more chapters from his perspective. Generations of tantalizing love triangles between families that repeat in loops for decades? Let's dig into that juicy gossip! Ruinous family secrets tucked under floorboards in vacation homes!? Someone hand me a hammer! I may be greedy but I want my clever, playful, insightful structural games to come with solid storytelling and satisfying conclusions.

Thank you to Netgalley for letting me read this book early!

I did finish this book but I wish I had not. I wanted to get to the bottom of who killed who but that never really happened that I could see. The book itself was more like a screen play or something very different than the novels I am used to. Out of the clear blue the author would start discussing something that happened in history or in an Agatha Christy novel. The whole book was totally confusing to me.

Adam joins an old friend for a weekend at an exclusive hunting club where he finds himself among secrets, intrigue, and then death. The story is set much as a play, plays with tropes and points of view, and brings in the ideas and works of other mysteries and mystery authors. Different, sometimes a little too much, but interesting overall.

Very intriguing and original perspective on how to write a suspenseful story. You'll enjoy it as much as I did.

DNFing this one at 30%

Unfortunately, this book did not work for me at all. The format was just too weird for me and the writing was too stiff and “fancy” for me to connect with any characters or get into the story. I felt very disconnected from the story and I did not seem to care at all. I found myself just wanting to be done with it.

I appreciate the author trying something new and different and I hope this book finds its target audience. Thanks so much to netgalley and the publisher for this book in exchange for an honest review!

While I can appreciate that the author is trying something new with the format of this book, the combination of mystery novel, screenplay, and what feels like a research paper on murder mysteries….it just didn’t work for me. I kind of enjoyed the part that read as a murder mystery, and to a much lesser degree the screenplay bits, the research paper bits were just too dry and I ended up wanting to skim most of them. The ending is especially confusing. It is just a bit of a “what did I just read” moment, but not in a good way.

Well, I must say the praise for this book is right: it's nothing like anything I've read before. It's written in a unique form, directly addressing the reader, and you could even say the narrator and the reader become characters themselves.
I found this peculiar style a bit annoying at first, but after a few pages, I found myself quite immersed in it. Although I liked it, at times it seemed like the plot and the characters were the least important things in the book. And I found the lack of personality of most of the characters quite annoying—at times they didn't feel like anything more than names written on a page.
At times, the story stops abruptly and the author starts telling you random facts about mystery novels, which happens quite randomly. I'm still not quite sure if I liked that or not.
This peculiar detective story may not be for everyone, but if you're a mystery fan and love the works of authors like Agatha Christie, Arthur Conan Doyle, G. K. Chesterton and Jorge Luis Borges—just to name a few of the many authors that are quoted throughout this book—you'll probably love it.
I’d like to thank NetGalley and the publisher for providing me an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Although I appreciate the premise and the creative delivery the author was going for, as a reader I lost interest and gained frustration quickly. Unfortunately, I did not finish the book, purely for writing style reasons. Thanks to NetGalley for giving me a shot.

This was not for me. I did not like the writing style at all. I thought the book sounded great because I enjoy traditional whodunit style mysteries and love a good locked room mystery but I could not get past the author’s voice in this to make any real headway in the story.
If you want a really uniquely written whodunit that breaks the 4th wall, you might enjoy this one.

Sometimes you just start a book and KNOW it's not one you actually want to read, no matter how great the synopsis and attention grabbing quotes were about it. BUT, because you are a reviewer, it give it more time and try to get thru the book. This is definitely a love it of really hate it book. I'm on the latter- sounding 100%. By the 3rd chapter the author constantly telling me (the reader) what he was doing and how I was supposed to be thinking went from irksome to annoying to aggravating and cliched by the 6th chapter. I have been reading mysteries for over 40 years. I can tell you exactly what goes into making a successful closed room mystery (this isn't it by the way), I don't need a pretentious character in the author's voice telling me. Then you can't even get to the solution because, wait for it, now there is a PLAY with all the characters and you, the reader, are part of it and have LINES to act out....Yes, the last fourth of the book is spent to the inane idea of now that we've aggravated the reader, let's make them throw the book by inserting a play.....Not sure who approved this one without serious editing, but it needs a rethink and quickly. I have not given a one star review in years, but it's time again...avoid this one if you love mysteries.

Thank you to Knopf and NetGalley for my advance electronic copy. All opinions are my own.

What a ride! McDorman was obviously having fun playing around with the genre, just like he had fun playing around with the structure of the narrative. This one runs the gamut of literary forms and devices: the narrator inserts him/herself as an element of the story from the first, telling the reader what to observe and what conclusions to draw (positively smashing the fourth wall). S/he doesn't so much guide the reader but jump in your face and tell you what to think. The narrative switches between third-person universal to first-person singular to first-person plural and more. It is regularly interrupted by essays on cogent subjects that tie back into the clues being left, but which also provide an interesting history on the mystery genre. The clues and literary references were delicious! All the changes and sharp turns could have made it feel like a fever dream, but I was surprisingly able to keep up and found it to be vivid in a roundabout way--cinematic, almost--and the dialogue to be snappy. (Research shows that McDorman is also an award-winning screenwriter, so it makes sense). Along this vein, most of the book is formatted as traditional narrative prose, but there are sections shaped as interviews and some important ones written as a play. The atmosphere was fairly consistently dark, ominous, and sad--it felt like "noir" to me. The purposeless depression felt by the characters and the way that the book ended left me feeling a bit directionless and dissatisfied, but not regretting having gone for the ride. Ultimately, I felt that this was entertaining but was also intended to be a philosophical exploration of guilt vs. innocence, crime vs. sin, and who, in the end, is responsible?