Ink Ribbon Red—the color of fictional blood. Except, this time, the blood spilled will be very real.

After the recent passing of his father, Anatol invites his closest friends to his late father’s estate for one last birthday weekend to mark his thirtieth year. What begins as a hopeful reunion filled with camaraderie quickly curdles into a weekend of tension, suspicion, and eventually—death.

Beneath the surface, old resentments and quiet doubts simmer. Then Anatol introduces a game: Motive, Method, Death—a dark exercise where each guest must invent a gruesome, plausible story of another’s demise. The rules are simple: make it believable, make it brutal.

As the stories grow more convincing, trust begins to unravel. Alibis crack. And soon, the line between fiction and reality blurs. Are these deaths just tales... or are some of them actually happening?

Told in alternating timelines and perspectives, this novel offers a fresh take on the classic locked-room mystery. While the premise was gripping and the structure intriguing, it didn’t hold me quite as tightly as other entries in the genre. Still, an ambitious and creative concept.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC!

DNF at 10%. Well, I was hoping for a fun and quirky mystery, but this wasn’t it. I’m sure if you can get through to the end it’s pretty clever, but what stopped me moving forward were the pages and pages of endless pointless dialogue. For example somebody calling a friend and saying I just have a minute….followed by 2-3 pages of the two characters squabbling about how early it is, before finally mentioning the reason for the phone call. This book revolves around four friends, and all of their dialogue is pointless squabbling with each other. I didn’t find it funny or endearing. I found it very annoying actually.

To be fair, I think this is one of those books written by one of those people that is so smart that they talk on a different plane than the rest of us. I think this might be a case of a book that I’m not smart enough to read, but who knows.

A Clever and Addictive Mystery Thriller

Alex Pavesi’s Ink Ribbon Red is a brilliantly crafted mystery that blurs the line between fiction and reality. The premise friends writing fictional murders that reveal real secrets is both original and unsettling, keeping the tension high from start to finish. As the game unfolds, hidden grudges and past betrayals surface, making every character a potential suspect and every turn of the page more gripping than the last. With sharp writing and a perfectly paced unraveling of twists, this novel is a must-read for fans of psychological thrillers and intricate whodunits.

I only made it about 1/5 of the way through this book, and found nothing to connect to in the characters, setting, or plot. Kudos to whoever wrote the description: they made it sound amazing, but the book did not follow through on those promises as far as I read. I couldn't wait anything longer for a plot to actually begin.

Ink Ribbon Red by Alex Pavesi is a thriller about five friends who are celebrating a birthday at Anatol’s family home. He decides he wants them to play a game he concocted called Motive Method Death. This consists of each person writing a story about killing one of their friends. I found the stories morbid but also disjointed for the flow of the main story. I didn’t know when I was reading the real story versus the game stories. There was a lot of back and forth through the timeline that made it harder to stay with the story. The characters were flat, it was hard to determine their motives or how they were supposed to be friends. I will decline sharing my review on social media due to not recommending the book for my followers. Thank you Henry Holt & Company and Netgalley for the advanced reader copy. All opinions are my own.

Who needs enemies with friend like this? It offers an intriguing premise—a deadly game that blurs the line between fiction and reality—but unfortunately, the execution doesn’t fully live up to the potential. The concept of a group of friends playing a game where they write stories about murdering each other is clever and ripe for suspense, but the characters and narrative fail to deliver the level of depth and tension needed to make it truly compelling.

While the setting—Anatol’s grand family home in the Wiltshire countryside—is atmospheric and provides the perfect backdrop for a mystery, the characters, particularly Anatol and Maya, come across as either irritating or underdeveloped. They’re supposed to be complex, but instead feel either annoyingly eccentric or vaguely drawn. The result is that it’s hard to connect with them or care about their fates.

The game itself creates some suspense, as secrets and grudges bubble to the surface, but the stakes feel weak, and the drama drags rather than captivates. The whodunnit aspect is reminiscent of Knives Out or Saltburn, but the plot lacks the sharp wit and rich character dynamics.

4⭐ | Ink Ribbon Red

This book had me hooked from the beginning with its eerie, immersive atmosphere and intricate storytelling. The blend of mystery and psychological tension kept me engaged, and I loved the way the narrative unraveled like an old, forgotten story being rediscovered. The protagonist was compelling, and the twists were well-executed, keeping me guessing until the end.

I did feel like some parts dragged a little, but overall, the unique premise and haunting tone made up for it. If you enjoy atmospheric mysteries with a touch of the unsettling, this one is worth picking up!

An interesting book but it’s completely non-linear timeline wise and it’s hard to follow. To me it gets clunky and disjointed, and it was hard to keep going through all the time jumps. The story was well written but the jumps made me dizzy.

Thanks to NetGalley for the copy of this ARC. This will be out July 2025!

Ink Ribbon Red is a very strange, unnerving, and non linear book that has the reader questioning what is real and what is not. This is a murder mystery containing multiple murders and the reader slowly discovers which one(s) actually happened and which are just stories.

The main action of the book happens over the course of the 30th birthday weekend of Anatol who hosts his friends regularly at his estate in the countryside of England. He's invited his regular crew of friends: Maya, Dean, Phoebe, Janika, and Marcin, each of whom have complicated and somewhat antagonistic relationships with each other. This birthday weekend comes shortly after the death of Anatol's father Gus who was apparently hated by Anatol's friends and was also suffering from dementia.

Anatol and his friends have the interesting hobby of writing stories about murdering each other and this is how they spend the weekend at Anatol's request. This is where the blurring between what is real and what is fake comes into play as the reader knows in advance that at least one death will occur however it's a slow burn as the reader figures out what actually happened and what is fantasy.

Some of the stories and back and forth between various perspectives went on for a little too long. There is also a plot point involving black mail which wasn't as interesting as it could have been mainly because the characters are very self absorbed and communicate poorly so this aspect of the story didn't seem to move very fast. It was also tedious at times to read them interacting with each other.

Overall however this was a very interesting way to frame the story and it was like putting pieces of a puzzle together as I read the fantasy version of the murders and then the actual version of what happened in the characters' reality. I enjoy books that contain a story within a story so this was a good way of doing that.

Many thanks to Henry Holt & Company and to NetGalley for this ARC to review. This review is my honest opinion.

I really liked The Eighth Detective and have been looking forward to this one since it was announced. I finally got approved and was so excited - and then I started to read it, and cannot even explain to you how disappointed I was. I could not connect to these characters at all. There was not a single one among them that I found relatable or empathetic or, frankly, interesting. They all felt like the same person, and I didn't like any of them. I also didn't quite get the plot. It felt like a writing class experiment more than a novel, and I rarely enjoy non-traditional narrative styles. I appreciate that authors enjoy exercising the skill to write them, but rarely do I enjoy reading them. Such was the case here.... I got bogged down in all of the narcissistic character presentations and simply couldn't find my way into the story. This one wasn't for me.

Ink Ribbon Red is a twisted mystery novel that is confusing and difficult to follow unless you are a superior sleuth. It is best read and understood in one setting since I did it in several and never knew where I was on the book. Best of reading to all..

I am not quite sure what to think of this book. It is both creative and odd. The author blends the fictional stories and the “real” story so that things blur, making it unclear what is actually happening to the characters and what is part of the short story murders they are supposed to be writing. Some of the murder methods were quite creative and amusing in a sense. The ending was not quite what I expected.

Good idea but the horrible characters didn't really draw me in to care about any of them. Locked room mystery but I had hoped for more.

Thank you for the ARC!

I am not used to a book of this genre taking me over two weeks to read. Quite frankly, my brain has been a specially “what in the actual …. did I just read!?”

I’m so grateful to NetGalley for the ARC of this e-book. The title alone piqued my interest. That said - it took me until the last 10% of the book to feel fully engaged. So many of the relationships and characters were just on the verge of overly annoying. The last several pages were such an abrupt stop.

I can’t say that I would seek out a book by this author again but that’s not to say that I wouldn’t give the author another read though either. I’m accustomed to reading a thriller/mystery within a couple of days and this one just couldn’t hold me to press on more than 3-4% per night.

Wow... This was a really strange and somewhat gruesome book.

What I Liked: The plot had a very unique setup where you are constantly guessing what parts of the story are real and what parts are made up. I read it really quickly because I just needed to know what was real.

What I Didn't Like: None of these people or relationships felt real. Did these "friends" ever even like each other? Who talks to each other like that? I could not discern anyone's motivations. I felt so separated from the characters and a persistent dissonance throughout the tale because the relationships were so weird. And the ending was just... sad. Really sad.

Thank you to NetGalley and Henry Holt & Co. for my e-ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I will only be sharing my review here on NetGalley as I don't like sharing negative reviews online.
Having enjoyed The Eighth Detective I was eager to read Pavesi's newest, and the premise of friends' traditions was intriguing.
These characters are all so miserable, and perhaps all to0 real in their incredible blandness, revealed through their repetitive conversations. I spent the first 30% of this book assuming that as the story (stories?) developed the characters would too, but they remained dreadful.
The conceit of the mix of the character's fictional stories peppering the "real" story ultimately makes everything feel convoluted, with heightened elements of violence. The final reveals of the book felt unnecessarily terrible and out of alignment with the character's motivation.
Admittedly, I skim read the last 40%, but given the repetitive nature of the conversations, it was fairly easy to-do so.
Pavesi does have some lovely turns of phrase and paints some interesting pictures, and I wish there had been more of that.

A 30th birthday party weekend in the English countryside turned a dark, secret exposing, blackmailing amongst friends.

This is a wild suspense novel, filled with morally gray characters harboring secrets from each other. Questions of loyalty, life cross roads, and murder or is it murder? You spend the book trying to figure out what is reality or fiction within the fiction.

I was torn on the rating because of the confusion but at the same time I feel like that shows the expertise of the book that it leaves you with such a puzzler and feeling like you want to slap or shake most of the characters at some point in the book, so I am leaning to the 4 stars.

This was a bizarre fever dream of a book. I really enjoyed the descriptive writing and the style and tone, it had a great flow. I have a bit of a book hangover after reading it, in a good way! Very unique story.

Oh man. This book took me so long to get through. The story twists and unravels in an unusual way, making the reader unsure what is part of the story and what is not. I found it so difficult to piece together that I almost DNF’ed. Now that I made it through and understand what was happening a little more, I almost feel like I should read it again? But at the same time, I already spent so many hours on this one I might just skip it.

Pavesi's first book, the Eighth Detective, played with the concept of what makes a mystery a mystery. Ink Ribbon Red takes this one step further and examines the meta-ness of truth, as we, the Dear Reader, are taken through a series of scenes of murder. Are they actually happening, or are they the stories being written by the characters in the book? It's a grand murder mystery where you don't know who was murdered until the end!

I am eager to see what Pavesi comes up with next!