Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC of this book, unfortunately I can not recommend it. Though the cover text implied a whodunnit style mystery with thriller elements, it failed to deliver. The characters we're one dimensional, the main character was casually misogynistic, and given how stereotyped the female characters we're, the author may be as well. The pacing was off throughout the book. There were moments that would catch my interest but the book would veer into long passages on the swiss banking system or the pseudo espionage subplot and lose me. The mystery could have been cleanly written and finished at half the length.

What the author was exactly trying to accomplish remains an enigma to me. Having never read another book by Joël Dicker I did not know what to expect. The beginning premise starts out with promise: Dicker, himself is a character (The Writer) in the book. He is mourning the loss of his mentor, wants to write a book about him, but is stymied. Soon the story veers off in another direction and becomes a supposed murder/suspense novel.

Joël travels to a posh hotel in the Swiss Alps to clear his head and hopefully the break will enable him to write his tribute. At the hotel he meets Scarlett and together they decide to investigate an unsolved mystery from the hotel's past. It seems Room 622 (where a murder occurred) no longer exists in the hotel and no one is willing to explain the anomaly. While Scarlet and The Writer investigate they unearth a scandal involving the family/owners of a well-known private bank in Geneva. The reader doesn't find out just who has died in Room 622 until almost the end of the book despite numerous clues and hints peppering the storyline.

Time flip flops from past to present and back to the past, characters are numerous, but no one is who you think they are. The storyline continually veers off on tangents and the action stutters causing unneeded confusion. The simplistic sentences and vocabulary plus the use of clichés and, often, hackneyed phrases were unpleasant surprises. I am not sure if the translation is the reason for this but I was disappointed in the quality of the writing as well as the annoying characters.

The author does tie up the loose ends with sort of a plausible finish and my rating is rounded up to 3 and a half stars due to this plus the sheer size of the tome. I am still not sure the purpose the author had in mind while writing this book though he does allude to it being an adventure. It is unlike any mystery I have previously read (and that is my go-to genre) leaving me still scratching my head.

Thanks to NetGalley and HarperVia for the ebook.

I have never read Dicker's novel before. that being said, this is a very long twisty turning kind of crime novel with a slightly bouncy feel, at times it feels much more like a screwball comedy or a low-stakes romance. It is distinctly old-fashioned.
It is very long, much longer than it needs to be. You could easily edit this book to half the size.This book will never explain something in a paragraph when it could give you a whole subplot of flashbacks.

A writer of the same name as the author travels to a luxury hotel to rest following the death of his publisher. Rest eludes because mystery interferes as he discovers there is no room numbered 622 in this hotel due to a murder committed years ago. The twisty plot featuring the author as main character feels very much like Anthony Horowitz. Set in Switzerland and translated from the French, this mystery is sure to captivate readers.

I was given an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. This book stars out fast and pulled me right in they discover there wasn’t a rom 622. We wanted to know what happened to that room or in that room. So you automatically think ask an employee..... they act squirrelly when asked. Ok we have to peel more on this onion.... I tall leads to the bank in Geneva ask the first teller he can’t say. Then he passed a note to meet him in a tea room around back of the bank at. 11:00. You think we are getting somewhere now. We’re not.. this is a very long book that goes forward zigs backwards in time even within the same chapter. I couldn’t read it straight through drove me crazy all the back and forth. Seems like we needed to see the same scene from many points of view. I found the ending contrived shoved into the last few pages. Had I known that I would have saved myself a lot of time and just ended it 600 pages sooner. Special thanks to NetGslley, Harper Collins Publishers,, Joel Dicker, and Enigma of Room 622. for the opportunity to read early.. if the book was tightened up quite a bit the book would be awesome however as is I find it meh.

My thanks to Net Galley and Harper for letting me review this book. Unfortunately I coukd not connect to this book to give an accurate review. The premise of the murder and the missing room really drew me in but then the story went into the direction of the background of the banker and I wasn't sure what I was supposed to be focusing on? Style of writing was also confusing. Can't recommend.

Joël Dicker, a prominent novelist and the author of this work, goes to the Hôtel de Verbier in the Swiss Alps. Disheartened over both a breakup and his mentor’s death, Joël hopes to rest, but soon he and fellow guest Scarlett uncover a long-unsolved murder that transpired in the hotel's now-missing room 622.

This one fell part for me. A sexist protagonist, cliche and unlikable characters, unrealistic dialogue, multiple time jumps within a chapter, pages of rambling exposition, multiple twisted plot lines, a deus ex machina, and, coming in at around 600 pages, it was a long read. Some might find the ending twist clever, but by the time we got there I didn’t care.

I’m not sure who the audience is for this book. I like mysteries with amateur sleuths and was expecting something like a thriller, but this just didn’t have the pace and energy of a thriller nor the emotional connection to a detective that I could cheer for.

A tough book to rate because it’s tough to recommend. I think you have to be a very specific type of reader to enjoy this. I’m not sure it will find its audience, but I hope so. I do believe I am a good reader for this in general because i love an old-school who-done-it, and I don’t mind a quirky read. I can tell you this book is bit old fashioned. It’s getting compared to Agatha Christie. I don’t see that comparison so much as this reminds me of the show Twin Peaks, but specifically the town drama. There are some preposterous moments in this that require you to suspend your disbelief. However, I found this to be old-school fun. It’s dramatic, it has a compelling mystery, and it kept me rapidly turning the close to 600 pages. A quick note about format: I did NOT listen to this on audio, and I’m of the opinion that this book would be disastrous on audio (at least for me personally). It’s just too complex and constantly moving between multiple timelines and time periods to forgo a physical copy. I will definitely be looking into Joël Dicker’s backlist and future books because I think he is an excellent writer who builds incredibly unique stories.

This murder mystery is far too convoluted to be worth the payout. The writing is repetitive and drags what could easily be a 200 page novella to a trudging tome far longer than it deserves to be. The characters are all unlikable, and their actions make so little sense, they unnecessarily complicate every situation. The central conflict is our mc’s obsession with becoming president of the bank he works at, and it is frankly a boring motive that never succeeded in investing my interest. The meta fictional aspects were clumsily done and though there were moments of insightful writing, that prose came off quite purple in comparison to the underwhelming majority of the book.

The enigma of Room 622 by Joel Dicker is an engrossing nd interesting read with fully detailed characters and plot. Well worth the read!

This is the first novel I read by this author and I really enjoyed it.

I loved the way this book was written the dual time lines and the different characters point of views. Also liked the the short chapters.

Couldn’t put this book down, I was so anxious to get to end and find out who the killer was.. Thru out the book my guess of he killer kept changing. Loved that by the end of the book all my questions were answered. I was surprised, I wasn't expecting that person to be the killer.

Was really surprised by the twist at the end.

Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC of The Enigma of Room 622.

I'm not sure how to review The Enigma of Room 622.

First, I liked the cover. And...that's the only thing I liked.

I could say it was too wordy, but that would be an understatement.

There was unnecessary, ridiculous, bloated exposition on nearly every character, nothing more than needless filler; constant timeline flip flopping, you don't know who is killed until more than halfway through this skull crusher, and you don't get the big reveal of the killer until the last five pages.

I could also say the characters were meh, one dimensional people whose names I've already forgotten nor did I care about.

There are plenty of moments where you need to suspend disbelief, and if you enjoy doing that, you'll like The Enigma of Room 622.

After the 5th time I was forced to suspend disbelief and imagine the characters were acting their own version of Mission Impossible, I checked out.

Then, we have the finale, the meta finale.

This has to be the recent, annoying trend where the author talks to the viewer or puts him or herself into the story since this is not the first book I've read that's used this plot device.

I get a bad feeling it won't be the last.

As some reviewers noted, this would have worked better as a novella or a short story. I highly agree!

The plot about who would succeed as bank president was beyond dull, and then to piggyback 700 pages of filler on that was excruciating.

The writing wasn't bad and I appreciate the opportunity to read this before publication but this was SOOO not for me.

For a synopsis that references great mystery and thrillers, I was disappointed by this book. I really enjoyed the first couple pages when the mystery is revealed that there is no room 622. I was in! But then, we get chapters within chapters. It was like inception within a book of jumping back and forth between timelines and a book within a book. I just felt there wasn't a lot of mystery and it took way too long to get to the intrigue.

I received my copy from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Well written kept me turning the pages kept me guessing.A book and author I will be recommending.Thanks for my copy #netgalley#harpervia.

Dicker built an intricately plotted mystery that comes together like a set of Russian dolls. He, himself, is a character, writing a novel about a murder in the titular room of a Swiss mountain hotel. He moves back and forth in time, changing readers’ expectations and putting them in a context that changes all assumptions. There is a large cast of suspects and revealing the killer is just one more twist. It is simply smart and very ingenious. That said, I didn’t connect with the story. This seldom happens to me, I was invested in the plot, I needed to know what was going to happen and I didn’t see many of the turns. Some required a considerable suspension of disbelief, so that may have been my problem. My other problem was connecting with the characters. One especially has such a turn in the end as to seem unbelievable. But I also was invested in them, which sometimes made me change my allegiances in the middle of a chapter. I found some parts repetitive, and maybe it could have been a little shorter. So I’m stuck writing this review, because this is a novel that I enjoyed profusely, but not completely. The best way I can describe it is that it engaged my brain, but left my heart cold. Even if the very last part, including the closing of the book, is probably one of the most beautiful sentences I’ve ever read. I guess this is Literature masquerading as popcorn fiction.
I chose to read this book and all opinions in this review are my own and completely unbiased. Thank you, #NetGalley/#HarperVia!

A famous Swiss writer who is mourning the death of his longtime editor and the end of a love affair goes off to a. Lovely hotel for an escape. He meets a fellow guest, Scarlett, and they become intrigued by an unsolved murder which took place in room 622. The murder relates to the succession at one of Switzerland’s most prominent private banks. This is a very complex tale switching between time periods and characters. I nearly stopped half way through but prevailed. It was quite clever and satisfying at the end.

I honestly do not know where to start with this book review. First, this book has been a very good lesson to me in how I should approach requesting books on NetGalley: I did not realize that this book was over 600 pages long until I was approved for and had downloaded it. I finished it solely out of spite and a desire to not have it negatively affect my NetGalley feedback rating.
This book has a very cute cover, but the story fell completely flat. Joël (the character) is cliche and stereotypical, his relationships with women are caricature. Every aspect of this story is bumbling, there are wild explanations with no substance to every problem. It is clear that the author was very fond of his late publisher, the book is dedicated to him and he appears as a character. However, this tribute would be better edited down to a short story.
This book is not for me, and frankly, I don't know who it would be suited for.

The final lines of The Enigma of Room 622 are, “for life, like a novel, must be an adventure. And adventures are life’s vacations.” If, as the transitive property suggests, novels are like vacations, this novel is like a work trip to Vicksburg Mississippi in August. It’s overlong, uncomfortably humid, smells kinda funny, and no one really wants to be there. I said to a friend when I first got this book, “it's either going to be terrible, or some fantastic nonsense.” Unfortunately it was the former. The bottom line is, don’t read this book. If you’re tempted; if you’ve been looking at this book and you think that you might want to read it despite that warning, let me have a chance to talk you out of it.

I try very hard to think of someone who would enjoy every book I read and review. But I cannot recommend this book to anyone--it's just bad. The translation is clunky, the characters are flat, it’s pretty sexist, and the plot... I read a lot of science fiction. I have reviewed a lot of science fiction on this blog. I particularly enjoy science fiction with convoluted and ridiculous plots. This plot! I can only describe it as Dan Brown by way of Scooby Doo. It does not strain disbelief--this is a full and complete muscular tear. This requires season ending surgery. Now I might have been able to find it in my heart to forgive the ridiculous plot that would need multiple industrial forklifts to achieve suspension, but this ridiculous terrible book seemed to think it was clever. It took itself so seriously. It was trying to be about grief and trauma and not about the fact that the Scooby Doo writers would have turned it away for being too far fetched.

No matter what you’re hoping to find in this book, it’s not there. If you want a clever murder mystery, read Seven and a Half Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle instead. If you want weird financial crime--read Bad Blood. If you’re looking for international conspiracies--hell go read actual Dan Brown and not this knock off brand. Real Dan Brown is also somehow less sexist than this manages to be.

Not that real Dan Brown is a paragon of female liberation. But this book is fundamentally uninterested in women except as they are prizes for men to win, or providing sex or withholding sex from the author insert character. Come on--did no woman read this book and point this out?!!? (Don’t answer that question, it will probably just depress me). The most prominent female character who doesn’t sleep with or pine after the author insert character is fought over and manipulated by the men in this book in a way that indicates the author fundamentally does not believe women have any agency or free will at all. Ew.

This book is full of itself, sexist, unbelievable, and uninteresting. It’s also somehow over 500 pages long. I can think of much better uses of your time. Surely there’s some paint to watch dry or some grass to watch grow. I read it so you don’t have to. You’re welcome.

The publishers gave me an ARC in exchange for an honest review. They certainly got one.

I really loved Joel Dicker's "The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair" a few years back, which is what interested me in picking this one up, as did the author-in-the-story trope. Unfortunately, it didn't work for me for a number of reasons and I didn't finish it. The main problem for me was the slow pacing that left me not wanting to stick with it to the end. That being said, I do generally like books about authors and it's important to keep in mind that this is a translation, so there is always the possibility that certain nuances in the original writing have been lost. I wouldn't tell anyone to stay away from it, I just thought it was a more challenging read than I expected and it may not be everyone's cup of tea. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for this ARC.

Starts out very slow, but the fact that the identity of the murder victim isn't revealed until past halfway through the book gives you incentive to keep reading. And the last half is filled with twists and turns that keep you guessing. But the flat, one-dimensional characters, numerous pages about Dicker's relationship with his French editor, constant jumping back and forth in the story's timeline, and the needless meta twist at the end make this a long, hard read.