This was good, not great. I was left a bit unsatisfied by the ending, and while the concept is cool, I found myself skimming through some of the duller aspects of showcasing school assignments and such.

This was an addicting, easy read. Epistolary as always with her novels. However, I think I’ve finally articulated that her books are never super memorable for me. The plot seems to drag out a lot and there’s too many POVs that I kind of get lost while reading the story.

Janice Hallett has done it again! A compulsive epistolary novel that kept me on my toes to the very last email! It’s incredible how multidimensional characters can be just told through emails, text messages, and class assignments. Would recommend to my friend’s who love a whodunnit. I would rate this 4.5 stars only because I reserve 5 stars pretty exclusively.

I was worried when I first started reading this book because it was a little bit of a slow start not unlike the Appeal. But I enjoyed it a lot more than the Appeal. The characters in the Royal Hastings Art course were a lot more relatable each having their own distinct personalities and backstories, something that I found different from the characters in the Appeal as the characters in that book all kind of melded together.

Once the story began to pick up I couldn’t put this book down. The twists and turns, the narrator turning out to be unreliable, just when I had thought I had the ending figured out Janice threw us another curve ball!! Overall this was a great book and I would highly recommend it!!

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for this digital ARC copy all opinions are my own.

3.75 stars! Janice Hallett delivers yet another suspenseful, tense mystery that enticed me from the get-go. Her ability to craft an entire mystery novel from emails, texts, and reports is truly astonishing. Every character has their own voice, which is insanely difficult to do when you’re only reading messages and don’t get any (or very few) details about the characters’ body language, physical traits, etc. Though some of the build up I found to be a little slow and boring at times, every detail matters and clicks together into an elaborate picture at the end, and the plot twists are jaw-drop worthy! I didn’t enjoy this one as much as The Appeal, but Hallett deserves all the recognition and applause - she’s an auto-buy author in my world.

Thank you so much to Atria for the e-arc!

5/5 stars. I LOVED this book. It kept me on the edge of my seat and left me trusting no one. I also loved the format of this book! It reminded me of Illuminae. Thank you NetGalley for the arc, please check this book out!!

Really enjoyed The Examiner and thought the characters were all pretty well fleshed out. I'm always intrigued by Hallett's modern epistolary novels and the characters created. My only criticism is that the story felt a bit stretched out too long but other than that the plot and characters kept me picking up the book again and again.

Janice Hallett is the absolute master of modern epistolary mysteries, each time selecting a new communications source to tell a story that makes the reader a detective. In the past she has used texts, emails, voicemails, theater scripts, children’s books, and news articles to build a tale. This time she’s primarily using “Doodle,” a Microsoft Teams/Slack-like group chat plus the student essays and reports of instructors. “The Examiner,” a final arbiter/reviewer and outsider, is trying to make sense of the grading of six students and he senses that something is definitely wrong — even to the point that a covered up murder might have occurred.

When reading a Hallett novel, it’s often best to be ready to jot down notes and keep track of the cast of characters before you get overwhelmed and your head explodes.

In the narrative, Gela is the chief tutor of a half dozen diverse participants in the Royal Hastings, College of London, Multimedia Art upper level (MA) course. She’s invested (and perhaps a tad desperate) in ensuring that this class succeeds enough to be featured in future college catalog offerings since a lot of the MA courses are being discontinued. She has handpicked the first participants.

The students:

Jem - youngest, jealous, makes cringe-y remarks, immature, gossipy, over-confident, dependent on her Dad as a chauffeur, and very nosy
Jonathan - gallery owner, in his 50s, seems too close to married Alyson
Patrick - art supplies store owner looking to join in with his customers’ creativity
Ludya - established graphic designer/single mother with two kids and time/money issues
Alyson - established artist, considered the “star” of the class, prefers to work at night
Cameron - corporate type with sensitive outside work, doing MA as a new hobby, not really engaged in the course, but possibly teacher’s pet (“kiss-kiss”)

Then we have the Examiner Ben, who is consulting with Tilda and Karen, just as the final group art project is installed, to see if his suspicions that something is amiss are true. He reviews the group conversations, private chats, and grading reports. Minor characters are admin Hannah (always trying to get paperwork from Gela) and art school technicians like Griff.

The group’s final collaborative project involves a real company with a long history that is trying to reinvent itself. There’s a group field trip (minus the annoying Jem) to the company’s archival site. Something is brought back from the corporate museum that probably shouldn’t have — and its inclusion in the final installation is a turning point.

Ms. Hallett’s brilliant talent is to make you feel like the primary detective — and her twists and revelations are amazing. You thought you were reading about the toxic teamwork during the final external review of an advanced art class, but in the end the final mystery is something altogether surprising. 5 stars!

Literary Pet Peeve Checklist:
Green Eyes (only 2% of the real world, yet it seems like 90% of all fictional females): NO This type of book has few physical descriptions of characters.
Horticultural Faux Pas (plants out of season or growing zones, like daffodils in autumn or bougainvillea in Alaska): NO Patrick considers suspending flowers in resin as a new business (and, um, he practices putting other things in resin, too).

Thank you to Atria Books and NetGalley for an advanced reader copy!

Hallett's books are so distinctive! I enjoyed the school setting of this one although I was puzzled for a long time how anyone could be in a MA pro9ram without having any kind of BA. I thought it must have been some British thing. I like how you really do get to know the characters despite them all being only represented by their text based communications and how she makes them seem like distinct people. So many writers can't do this even in a more conventional format. It was a lively, quick read.

Great pacing and great development for the characters. I was heavily invested in the plot and descriptive settings.

Wow! This one was fun.

I really enjoyed the unique format of this novel. It was easy to follow despite the different types of communication mods the author used. The characters were interesting, and there were many twists that I did not see coming. Jem was a particularly engaging character, and my impressions of her changed as the story developed. The story kept me guessing the entire time. I recommend checking it out.

Thanks to NetGalley for the book to review.

4 stars

If you ever find yourself with a full day of free reading time, the first author that I would recommend picking up to fill it with is Janice Hallett. All of the books that I have read by her are thoroughly engrossing puzzles that will leave you guessing from the first page to the last page. The Examiner, a mixed-media deep dive into the dark secrets lurking behind a MA Arts degree program, is no exception.

For me, Hallett does her best work when she works with a tight-knit but highly dysfunctional cast of colorful characters. The choice to put her seven main characters in the pressure cooker that is a graduate program is both highly entertaining as we witness altercations from petty tiffs to outrageous sabotage and haunting as the plot begins to twist and the reader is focused to question everything that has occurred thus far. While some of the twists and reveals felt like they went a little off the rails, I devoured this book in less than 24 hours and I will continue to pick up anything that Hallett writes.

Thank you to NetGalley and Atria Books for an ARC of this book in exchange for a fair and honest review!

Janice Hallett is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors and her new book, The Examiner, was another thoroughly enjoyable read.

Funding is being cut in the art department at Royal Hastings University in the UK. Gela Nathaniel has recruited six students to take her Multimedia Art course in hopes of ensuring her future. These students couldn’t be more different and chaos ensues as they struggle to work together to complete their final assignment which must be done as a team.

As she’s done so well before, the story is told from message board excerpts, what’s app messages, student final essays and other unorthodox means. What unfolds is a crazy and creative jigsaw puzzle that I find refreshing and fun. I encountered this author’s writing style in her book, The Appeal. At first, I found it hard to follow, but as I became used to this original way of telling a story, I was and continue to be awestruck by Hallett’s imaginative and intelligent writing.

I was entertained from the start and didn’t want to stop reading, constantly awaiting what would be revealed next. There were satisfying twists and an ending that wrapped up nicely.

I’ll be buying the audiobook when it comes out as I know there are things I will catch listening that I missed reading the first time.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I really enjoyed this one! I love how different Janice's novels are and how engaging they are for the reader, I truly never felt bored. My one issue is that it sometimes felt outdrawn and the resolve could have come sooner, but overall I really enjoyed this.

Thank you to NetGalley and Atria Books for providing me this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

No one writes mysteries like Janice Hallett. All of her books are like puzzles that will really challenge you. I always look forward to seeing what new format she will come up with next.

The Examiner is told through an online message board for a masters level class, as well as some emails and texts between the characters. You know that someone will be dead by the end of the class, but WHO won’t be revealed until at least two thirds through the book.

There is a large cast of characters with big personalities and plenty of motives. There are several mysteries entangled in the main mystery, as well as plenty of plot twists.

I know returning fans and new fans alike will love this fun, engrossing mystery.

This was fine.

What I liked:
- The format was unique and that is always interesting
- Diverse and prickly characters

What didn't work:
- The characters never quite felt well fleshed out until the very very end
- The ending itself seemed a little rushed
- In the end, I didn't buy that all this story would have been written about in this format.

I will read any book that Janice Hallett releases. The examiner was a unique murder mystery set in a school setting and I found myself not able to put the book down as the story progressed because I wanted to know what happened. With every twist and turn I was sucked in and ultimately I was shocked by the ending.

An addictive new addition to the Hallett-verse. Told through text messages, grade summaries, emails, and performance reviews, this inventive novel stretches the reader's thinking while also requiring compulsive reading to find out what happens next. Ultimately, I felt that the novel bit off a bit more than it could chew by the conclusion...but the ride was worth the slight letdown.

5 shiny stars. A favourite of the year! Janice Hallett’s books are just so my kind of thrillers. I immediately want more once I’ve finished one!

Told in mixed media snippets, including message boards and text messages, the narrative sucked me in right away! It leans into the same dark, satirical humour as the author’s book The Appeal, just maybe to a slightly lesser extent. But just like that book, The Examiner also features a group of terrible people, who are bitchy and vicious and so much fun to follow!

I won’t say anything about the plot—the less you know, the more fun trying to unravel it all is going to be—but I had no idea where it was going and was surprised by several things in the best way!

Personally, if I had to rank all the author’s books, this is probably my least favourite, BUT that's not saying much! It's a chocolate-box-full-of-favourites kind of situation. All are amazing and I’ll eat them all up with pleasure, but there are still preferences!

If you love this format and narrative structure and you enjoy how Janice Hallett executes it, then you’ll have a great time.

I’m forever a Janice fan. Her writing style is so unique and it sucks me in every time. If you love thrillers that only give you tidbits of information at a time that keep you going till the very end. Anything from Janice is the way to go. When I tell you the Examiner threw me for a loop the entire time, I’m not joking!!