I really wanted to enjoy this book, but everything just happened too easily and without much conflict. The god wants something, he gets it. Where's the drama?

Also, something about the writing style made me feel detached from the story, and I didn't feel much for the main character, even though she'd been through a lot. 

The nail in the coffin was when the plot turned into a treasure hunt, which I could tell was going to be dragged out and boring. 

From the first page of this I had a feeling that the book was going to give every excuse under the sun as to why unmoral/abusive/misogynistic men aren't actually responsible for their own horrible actions, and why they should be pitied instead. From some of the reviews I have now read, it looks like I was completely right… 
 
This initial feeling was then exacerbated (on page 8 mind you) by the idea that 'men with abominable passions' and 'murderers of their own parents' are only driven to such acts because they're inhabited by evil spirits. Because OF COURSE men who commit terrible deeds could never actually be accountable for them.
 
This above passage also includes 'the mentally ill' and people with epilepsy in the SAME sentence as the abominable passioned men and murderers, making me think the author views these things in a similar light. FUCK OFF. Mentally ill people (let alone epileptics) cannot all be tarred with the same brush as MURDERERS. 
 
NO THANK YOU.
 
NOT IN THE MOOD FOR SUCH ABELIST MISOGYNY.
 
GOODBYE. 

This book is really well written, and the audio narration is really good. It is the content itself I have issues with.
 
I got to the end of the first story, and after reading reviews, I don't think I'm going to enjoy the rest of it.
 
I don't like how the first story was left. I feel like there should have been more of Suzette growing up and coming into herself as a person, rather than a couple of semi-rebellious road trips. It seemed like the author was infantilising her while also making her seem like sort of sex icon. It was very weird how the only two people she was close to ended up being in romantic/sexual relationships with her. They both infantilised her and didn't treat her like an adult (the sex scene felt almost predatory), but the ending was seen as positive and all was right with the world?? 
 
Suzette's abusive household also wasn't addressed enough for how big a part of the story it was.
 
Overall I did enjoy this first story, but I felt it needed to be developed further, and I have no interest in reading another two underdeveloped narratives.  

I usually enjoy unlikeable narrators, especially if their mis-deeds and views are commented on or the novel has a compelling plot. So far, this book has included neither of these things, so I'm giving up.
 
My main issue is that Dominik is viewed almost as a heroic/self-sacrificing character in the majority of the book, but he has APPALING views on women. He is so misogynistic and objectifying - he essentially acts as if women only exist for his pleasure. As I've said, if there was ANY commentary on this, or a suggestion that we are meant to see this as a flaw in his character, I wouldn't have minded as much, but I get the sense that we are meant to forgive him for his behaviour because he works so hard to look after his brother. 
 
The first red flag was when between them, Lamb and Dominik victim blame a 13-YEAR-OLD sexual abuse victim by saying she 'wanted it' so it wasn't really rape. DISGUSTING. There's no commentary on this, or even an allusion to Dominik being mistaken in his views.
 
I was wary from that point on, and just couldn't deal with any more of Lamb’s repulsive misogyny, there is SO much in this book - I'd say there's at least one derogatory comment towards women on every single page of it. I just can't face another 700 pages of that, and after reading reviews where there's on-page rape which never gets properly discussed and the rapist is forgiven, I know this isn't the book for me.

I thought I was close to being done with this, then looked and saw I had over 2 hours left, and I just couldn't face carrying on with it.
 
The HUGE issue with my experience was the narration of the audiobook. The book itself seemed 3 star-ish, but I think I would have continued it if it weren't for the ATROCIOUS narration.
 
The narrator for Caro was fine, I had no issues with them. BUT, the narrators for Sally and Pauly were SO bad. Their cadence was so weird and disjointed. Sentences were broken up and it was impossible to feel the flow of the story - I even completely lost track of what the characters were saying in places because everything was so clipped while also being unnecessarily drawn out.
 
Sally and Pauly's narrators also gave pretty much no emotion or feeling. This may have been a stylistic choice, but due to the baffling reading cadence, I'm more convinced that they're just not very good voice actors. 
 
It's a true shame that the narration made me DNF this book, as I thought it discussed some interesting ideas. I just couldn't get past the audiobook’s lacklustre delivery.  

McIntire's writing style just isn't right/good enough for historical writing. The political tension she was trying to build didn't work, and there was zero world-building. Some of the language she used was so modern that it completely took me out of the world. 

I didn't understand the motives of so many characters, and felt absolutely no connection or heat between the love interests.

Which sucks, because I LOVE Hamlet and was really looking forward to this one. 

I stopped listening to this because I've read too much LGBT trauma recently, and did not want to have to read through the aftermath of an attempted sexual assault.   
 
I feel like the writing was really vague while discussing gender and sexuality topics. It was hard for me to get a grasp on the author's points, even though these seem to be the main premise of the book.
 

I'm not sure how I feel about Matty being trans (I assume, nothing has been properly discussed yet, maybe non-binary, or FTM?) being used as a shock twist. It felt a little ingenuine, especially coming from a (as far as I can tell) cis-author.

 
In terms of the audiobook itself - in the first section of the book it was really difficult to tell when certain scenes ended because there was ZERO pause between paragraphs. It got really confusing at times.
 
Maybe I'll come back to this at some point. But all I really want are non-trauma-based books about the LGBT community, written by the LGBT community.  

I just couldn't be bothered to continue with this.

The story, while at first moderately interesting, just got dull and repetitive. 

I know the main character is young, but she just seemed really thick, and it was annoying me no end. 

The stakes were also so low, but being heighted unrealistically. 

The narration wasn't very good, and she kept drawing out words and the ends of sentences in exactly the same way, which just made the cadence feel very monotonous.

I didn't pick this up for the title, cover, or tag lines, but if I had I would have been disappointed. There is nothing thriller-esq or dark about this, and the title is misleading - its just a girl on holiday in Cornwall discovering adults lie and can be bad people. 

I would not have enjoyed another three hours of this. 

I wanted to try this as I've seen quite a lot of discourse about it.

Bearing in mind I didn't make it very far through the book, the opening just seemed so juvenile and derivative and the 'conflicts' so contrived and predictable. I can sometimes enjoy YA books with this sort of writing style IF there is a plot line or something interesting to hold my attention, but this one had neither.

I also really didn't enjoy the first POV's narrator. Her voice grated on me and sounded childish, which just compounded the issues I have with the writing style. 

Unfortunately, I just couldn't get behind the change of author between this book and the last. 

This book feels far more clunky and less intricate than Larsson's books, and somehow also seems less Swedish. 

Maybe I'll try it again in future, but at the moment I don't want to waste time on a book whose writing style I don't like.