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readingwithsierra 's review for:

An Unwanted Guest by Shari Lapena
4.0


I always love a good murder mystery and I really applaud books that can do the multiperspectives flawlessly. This book was a very well thought out depiction of the classic “whodunnit”, allowing the reader a false sense of clarity to the situation because even though you get to see what each character is thinking and feeling, you don’t get the inside scoop throughout the entire book. There are moments that are completely empty from the reader and that is one thing I adore about this book, many of the characters are believable and yet you are trying to figure out when these murders could have taken place because you’ve been with everybody, right? Because this book plays on the multi-perspectives, you get to see everybody’s dirty laundry and get a sense of who they really are behind the scenes, so there is no one ‘bad guy’ throughout this entire book. I was forced to see every character through the lense of the killer and trying to piece this whole story together was so entertaining to me. I feel the flow of the story was also executed very well, i never felt like a character had to die every chapter for it to stay interesting and there was time in between scenes that didn’t add to the plot at the time but made sense later. My one downfall with this book was the ending. Oh my god that ending was shut up so quick that I felt my head spinning. Was I disappointed with it? Not necessarily, but I did feel it could have been elongated to mimic what actually happens when a murder suspect is arrested. It felt like “well we found this one piece of evidence, let's arrest them” and after the suspect is arrested you see a blip of their backstory and how they succeeded in murdering people, but not really what happens after. No character interviews (well, no actual ‘interviews/statements’), no follow up investigation such as: fingerprinting, DNA, research. No we just get, here's the killer and how they did it. But there was a part of the ending I thoroughly enjoyed, so that saved it for me. Overall, I would most definitely read more Shari Lapena, her books are great to read and I love the developments made with her characters.