QUICK TAKE: I loved it. I think true fans of the whodunnit genre will love it. I think the ending will REALLY upset some people, but I was kinda into it (and I'm frankly still thinking about it). It's basically KNIVES OUT meets THE ICE STORM. Cool new author to keep an eye on.

{2.5/5}

CW: suicide, drug use, abuse, Nazis, death of a dog, mild gore/violence, some others

Read as an ARC via NetGalley. Book publishes October 24, 2023

I struggled with rating this book. I also struggled to finish it, but we’ll get to that in a moment. Normally, a book that is written decently but whose story I didn’t love, or a book whose story was amazing but had less than thrilling writing backing it up, would earn a 3. A 3 falls right in the middle of my 1-5 scale; it’s like a really comfy armchair with one leg too short—a tolerable experience, but not as good as it could have been. By writing standards, this book should have at least earned a 3. There’s no doubt in my mind that the author possesses an immense talent for putting together strings of words. It’s scattered all throughout the story, little bits and pieces of skill sitting right there on the page for you to notice and appreciate. But the actual execution of the story? It made me dread picking the book back up to finish.

I don’t even know that I can really give an accurate synopsis of the story because I’m not entirely sure what it really ended up being. It was supposed to be a “rich people getaway whodunit” set in the 1970’s, but it ended up feeling more like “a study of mystery as a genre” rather than an actual mystery story.

The narrative style is what really threw off my groove with this book. I’m sure some people will really enjoy it, but I just found it irritating. The narrator changes throughout, sometimes as the detective, predominately as the author, occasionally as another member of the character list (though not identified). The actual story is interspersed with asides that document the history of how ‘mystery’ developed as a genre, or on the origins of the word ‘murder,’ or innumerable other things. While an interesting tactic for turning the reader’s attention to a lot of possibilities at once, it severely threw off the flow of the story, and if you were to take out all the asides we’d be left with an incredibly short tale. Unfortunately, the tone that these in-between scenes were conveyed in also went from ‘snobby, but it works’ to ‘incredibly irritating’ quite rapidly. It felt like a remote surveillance by the author of their own story, facetious and high-handed enough to border on purple prose without fully crossing the line, that somehow works as a plot device and yet pulls you out of the flow of the story at the same time.

I wanted to love the story, I really did. For me, though, it ended up feeling like someone had taken the bare bones of detective story, filled it with an incredibly unlikable and one-dimensional cast, cut and paste background research in at random intervals, rounded it out with an altogether unsatisfying conclusion, and tied everything up with discordantly well executed writing. Personally, this wasn’t a favorite, but if experimental fiction is your thing, and you’re okay with a little fictional whiplash, this might be the book for you.

Lots and lots and lots of potential that missed the mark at every turn for me. The history of the genre interwined with a murder mystery is an excellent idea. And I am all for bending the rules when it comes to the storytelling, so the non-traditional narrative style worked for me in many places. But while the author made interesting and discussion-worthy points about the are of creating a mystery novel, the novel itself got in the way. Or maybe it was the other way around? Either way the characters mean nothing to us, and the conclusions feel bland.

The author works so hard to create the framework they forgot to fill it in. It often felt like he relied on the tricks to mask the lack of actual storytelling. More time was needed on developing the characters and less time telling the reader what they were thinking. (This literally happens throughout the book.) What I was actually thinking was "Give us more Emma!" she is the most interesting character in the book, and her moments with the Detective were the most enjoyable for me. Like in so many books before, the women are the best parts and know all the secrets, but are ignored in order to highlight the pursuits of men.

We get it, the author is clever. I just wished he had spent less time trying to convince of us that. I wanted to hang out with and know more from the characters of West Heart. The young boy who has secret access, binoculars, and a meticulous map? Let's get more chapters from his perspective. Generations of tantalizing love triangles between families that repeat in loops for decades? Let's dig into that juicy gossip! Ruinous family secrets tucked under floorboards in vacation homes!? Someone hand me a hammer! I may be greedy but I want my clever, playful, insightful structural games to come with solid storytelling and satisfying conclusions.

Thank you to Netgalley for letting me read this book early!

I did finish this book but I wish I had not. I wanted to get to the bottom of who killed who but that never really happened that I could see. The book itself was more like a screen play or something very different than the novels I am used to. Out of the clear blue the author would start discussing something that happened in history or in an Agatha Christy novel. The whole book was totally confusing to me.

Adam joins an old friend for a weekend at an exclusive hunting club where he finds himself among secrets, intrigue, and then death. The story is set much as a play, plays with tropes and points of view, and brings in the ideas and works of other mysteries and mystery authors. Different, sometimes a little too much, but interesting overall.

Very intriguing and original perspective on how to write a suspenseful story. You'll enjoy it as much as I did.

DNFing this one at 30%

Unfortunately, this book did not work for me at all. The format was just too weird for me and the writing was too stiff and “fancy” for me to connect with any characters or get into the story. I felt very disconnected from the story and I did not seem to care at all. I found myself just wanting to be done with it.

I appreciate the author trying something new and different and I hope this book finds its target audience. Thanks so much to netgalley and the publisher for this book in exchange for an honest review!

While I can appreciate that the author is trying something new with the format of this book, the combination of mystery novel, screenplay, and what feels like a research paper on murder mysteries….it just didn’t work for me. I kind of enjoyed the part that read as a murder mystery, and to a much lesser degree the screenplay bits, the research paper bits were just too dry and I ended up wanting to skim most of them. The ending is especially confusing. It is just a bit of a “what did I just read” moment, but not in a good way.

Well, I must say the praise for this book is right: it's nothing like anything I've read before. It's written in a unique form, directly addressing the reader, and you could even say the narrator and the reader become characters themselves.
I found this peculiar style a bit annoying at first, but after a few pages, I found myself quite immersed in it. Although I liked it, at times it seemed like the plot and the characters were the least important things in the book. And I found the lack of personality of most of the characters quite annoying—at times they didn't feel like anything more than names written on a page.
At times, the story stops abruptly and the author starts telling you random facts about mystery novels, which happens quite randomly. I'm still not quite sure if I liked that or not.
This peculiar detective story may not be for everyone, but if you're a mystery fan and love the works of authors like Agatha Christie, Arthur Conan Doyle, G. K. Chesterton and Jorge Luis Borges—just to name a few of the many authors that are quoted throughout this book—you'll probably love it.
I’d like to thank NetGalley and the publisher for providing me an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Although I appreciate the premise and the creative delivery the author was going for, as a reader I lost interest and gained frustration quickly. Unfortunately, I did not finish the book, purely for writing style reasons. Thanks to NetGalley for giving me a shot.

This was not for me. I did not like the writing style at all. I thought the book sounded great because I enjoy traditional whodunit style mysteries and love a good locked room mystery but I could not get past the author’s voice in this to make any real headway in the story.
If you want a really uniquely written whodunit that breaks the 4th wall, you might enjoy this one.

Sometimes you just start a book and KNOW it's not one you actually want to read, no matter how great the synopsis and attention grabbing quotes were about it. BUT, because you are a reviewer, it give it more time and try to get thru the book. This is definitely a love it of really hate it book. I'm on the latter- sounding 100%. By the 3rd chapter the author constantly telling me (the reader) what he was doing and how I was supposed to be thinking went from irksome to annoying to aggravating and cliched by the 6th chapter. I have been reading mysteries for over 40 years. I can tell you exactly what goes into making a successful closed room mystery (this isn't it by the way), I don't need a pretentious character in the author's voice telling me. Then you can't even get to the solution because, wait for it, now there is a PLAY with all the characters and you, the reader, are part of it and have LINES to act out....Yes, the last fourth of the book is spent to the inane idea of now that we've aggravated the reader, let's make them throw the book by inserting a play.....Not sure who approved this one without serious editing, but it needs a rethink and quickly. I have not given a one star review in years, but it's time again...avoid this one if you love mysteries.

Thank you to Knopf and NetGalley for my advance electronic copy. All opinions are my own.

What a ride! McDorman was obviously having fun playing around with the genre, just like he had fun playing around with the structure of the narrative. This one runs the gamut of literary forms and devices: the narrator inserts him/herself as an element of the story from the first, telling the reader what to observe and what conclusions to draw (positively smashing the fourth wall). S/he doesn't so much guide the reader but jump in your face and tell you what to think. The narrative switches between third-person universal to first-person singular to first-person plural and more. It is regularly interrupted by essays on cogent subjects that tie back into the clues being left, but which also provide an interesting history on the mystery genre. The clues and literary references were delicious! All the changes and sharp turns could have made it feel like a fever dream, but I was surprisingly able to keep up and found it to be vivid in a roundabout way--cinematic, almost--and the dialogue to be snappy. (Research shows that McDorman is also an award-winning screenwriter, so it makes sense). Along this vein, most of the book is formatted as traditional narrative prose, but there are sections shaped as interviews and some important ones written as a play. The atmosphere was fairly consistently dark, ominous, and sad--it felt like "noir" to me. The purposeless depression felt by the characters and the way that the book ended left me feeling a bit directionless and dissatisfied, but not regretting having gone for the ride. Ultimately, I felt that this was entertaining but was also intended to be a philosophical exploration of guilt vs. innocence, crime vs. sin, and who, in the end, is responsible?

2.5/5

This book has an incredibly unique voice and structure throughout that is very meta...it obliterates the 4th wall at every turn. I LOVED that about this book. Unfortunately, things like the characters or the mystery we were trying to solve or the setting I didn't really care for as much...I would love to see this author's future books if they still had fun writing choices but had other elements that were of more interest to me!

The premise of the book sounded interesting and while a classic murder mystery is not my preferred genre I do enjoy them from time to time. That being said this was painful to get through. The way the story is told - sometimes narration, sometimes speaking directly to the audience and sometime acted out like a play complete with scene setting made this a disjointed story to follow and really get submerged into. While I credit the author for the unique approach to narration it did not work for me, it took away from the story.

I am a sucker for a meta-mystery (see: 7 ½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle or Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone) so I was instantly drawn into this story. A private detective visits a hunting club on the bicentennial holiday weekend and the bodies start piling up. But interspersed throughout this standard murder mystery were reflections and explanations of genre tropes. We get real-life and classic story examples of locked room mysteries, crime author pseudonyms and the story of Agatha Christie’s disappearance.

It was all a lot of fun, especially for anyone who reads a lot of detective novels, but the ending landed a little too firmly on the esoteric side for me, ultimately knocking it down half a star to 3.5.

I received this from Netgalley.com.

Absolutely hated the writing style, it was confusing and irritating. The story was okay.

1.5☆

3.25 stars

Adam McAnnis is a detective heading out for a weekend to a college friend’s hunting lodge. It’s the 1970s and the people who are members of this lodge have known each other pretty much all their lives. When a storm hits while they are there, blocking any way to or from the lodge, people start turning up dead.

I thought this was clever. My synopsis is the actual mystery part, but much of the book was done in different styles. That is, much of the book was told directly from the author to the reader, breaking the “fourth wall”. We went off on various tangents talking about what might happen, traditionally (or not), at various parts of a mystery story. Also, there were tangents that focused on classic mystery authors and stories. Again, I thought clever and very different.

I also thought the atmosphere was done well – I definitely pictured the ‘70s hunting lodge: all brown wood paneling with hunted animal heads on the walls and such. But, I also found it quite “literary” and a bit dry. I certainly didn’t care about the people. I did, however, like the twist near the end – that, I definitely didn’t see coming. I also liked the way things were revealed at the end. Again, the author changed the way he was telling the story, and this time, it was done in the style of a play. I didn’t mind all the different things going on in how it was told, but I guess there was a lot going on that way. Mostly because I found the story quite dry, I am rating it “ok”, but with an extra ¼ star for the uniqueness of the book.

2.5/5 stars

This is billed as a unique murder mystery, and I would agree with that. It is interspersed with insights and basically nonfiction material relating to the topic of each chapter of the fictional story.

A private investigator (Adam McAnnis) insinuates himself into the Bicentennial celebration of members at the West Heart Club in upstate NY. As characters begin to die, the reader follows along as Adam questions and pieces together the sordid goings-on (for generations) at the club…the secrets, lies, greed, adultery, etc.

While the mystery part of the story was fine and had an added twist I really did not see coming, it was the author’s added chapters of explanations of plot devices, tools of the trade, etc. that I did not appreciate. Honestly, I felt they were a bit condescending to the reader (as they were skewed toward the author’s own opinions), and in all honestly, these “insights” interrupted the flow of the storyline without adding much of anything of interest to me. So, while it’s a novel/unusual format to use, it just served to distract me.

Unfortunately, this one was just not on par for me.

My thanks to NetGalley and Knopf for providing the free early arc of West Heart Kill for review. The opinions are strictly my own.

Interesting mystery that tips it‘s hat and pays homage to the best mystery writers through history. It has an unique 4th wall format going on but it was a bit too cute and pretentious for me, it kept pulling me out of the story. Pretty bold for a debut though so I will definitely read more from him. Releases October 24th.