ARC REVIEW

West Heart Kill
BY Dann McDorman

Rating: ⭐️.5/ ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Publishing date: 10/25/23

Listen. This is a big no for me dawg!

I thought this was going to be a "who done it" which it was ,but after reading....I DONT EVEN KNOW WHO THE FREAKING KILLER IS!!!!

This was SO weird. Like..the style is completely off the wall crazy. For part of the book the reader is being taught about various types of mystery books, then we go back to the story, then we get a "case study" and then it turns into a PLAY. A legit script for a play.....huh?

I do not recommend it.

If you have read this, PLEASE message me.

Even though it was definitely not for me, I'm still thankful for @netgalley and @aaknopf for the arc!

GOOD READS SUMMARY:
A unique and irresistible murder mystery set at a remote hunting lodge where everyone is a suspect, including the erratic detective on the scene—a remarkable debut that gleefully upends the rules of the genre.

An isolated hunt club. A raging storm. Three corpses, discovered within four days. A cast of monied, scheming, unfaithful characters.

When private detective Adam McAnnis joins an old college friend for the Bicentennial weekend at the exclusive West Heart club in upstate New York, he finds himself among a set of not-entirely-friendly strangers. Then the body of one of the members is found at the lake’s edge; hours later, a major storm hits. By the time power is restored on Sunday, two more people will be dead.

I must admit not being ready for this as I hadn't read any of the other opinions, and picked it up looking for a sorbet. Described as meta, the underlying murder mystery kept being interrupted by notes, sidelines, fourth wall commentary, and that I suppose is the point of the book.

im a huge fan of murder mysteries so i loved this one. i loved how meta it was as well as all the twists.

After the initial pages, I found myself not connecting with the story or characters, so I decided to pass on this book. Did not finish

This pains me to write because I was so excited for this one and unfortunately it disappointed me.

On a positive note though, I think this is one of the coolest covers I've seen in a while!

Right off the bat, I was super excited because it was giving me major Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone vibes (5 star read for me). The narrator seemed very similar to that book, along with breaking the 4th wall, listing rules for murder mysteries, etc. etc.

Unfortunately, this book felt like it was trying too hard to be clever and because of that it felt so "high brow" that I didn't even care/or really understand what was happening with the characters and the plot since it was all focused on the "rules" of a murder mystery.

Overall, not what I expected, but I'd still be willing to read what he writes again in the future. Hoping this will still be a hit for many!

Thanks so much to Knopf for the ARC. This book will be available on October 24th!

I really wanted to like this one, I enjoy meta mysteries, but this one is too precious by half. It is nowhere near as smart as it wants you to think it is, and its conceit drags down the pacing and almost made me DNF.

This was a fascinating story within a story. On one hand there is 1970's themed murder mystery afoot in a secluded private hunting camp with all of the miscreants and harpies you would expect to find. One the other, there is a breaking of the fourth wall type dialogue with the reader regarding the murder mystery genre and some of its most prolific authors. I thoroughly enjoyed the entwined ongoing investigation littered with bits of murder mystery trivia. The only flaw was of my own doing. I was unable to figure out who the murderer was even at the end of the book. I reread the ending over and over and searched the internet for a clue to no avail which just leaves me still thinking about the book into the future when so many stories are ultimately forgettable.

Thank you to NetGalley and The Publisher for the eARC. I struggled with reading this one, the narrative choices were confusing and the format was not for me. It's a very unique mystery and the whodunit and why was intriguing, but unfortunately, I did not enjoy the experience of reading West Heart Kill as much as I hoped to.

I really wanted to love this book, but I didn’t. I couldn’t get into it and had trouble connecting with the story and the characters. It just kept going and I couldn’t wait to be done with this. I’d give West Heart Kill a pass.

I enjoyed the actual mystery itself, the whodunit and whydunit of it all, although I was never able to keep the characters exactly straight in my mind. I didn't care for the changing points of view because I felt like I was back in high school identifying items for a test: first person, second person, limited, and omniscient. Plus the asides and descriptions from the narrator took me out of the story. I found it hard to pick up this book and get dropped into the story. All sorts of examples of mysteries and their parts were explained to us, and many were used in this story. The ending wasn't my cup of tea because it seemed like a slap in the face after putting the time and effort into reading.

Unfortunately, I did not enjoy this book.

The biggest issue for me is the choice of narrative devices the author uses. We are given the actual murder mystery/thriller from the point of view of an unknown narrator as well as injections of commentary on murder mystery tropes and history from the author. Initially, these interjections were just annoying, pulling me out of the story and keeping me from connecting to the characters and what was happening.

As the novel progressed, these interjections became more frequent, and took over the book. I was left with the feeling that the book existed to show how smart the author is (there was clearly a great deal of research done), rather than to tell a story. In the end, both the plot and characters lacked development, as more time was spent with the author's thoughts.

Content warnings: This novel features abuse of women and anti-semitism as plot points, with barely a frown at their occurrence. There is a sense of, well, it was the times, with no suggestion that they were bad. The books does not include racism, but probably only because there were no characters of color.

This reads like a screenplay. I struggled with reading this one. It's a very unique mystery, but unfortunately, I did not enjoy the experience of reading West Heart Kill as much as I wanted to.

"Looking for an anything-but-ordinary whodunit? Welcome to the West Heart country club. Where the drinks are neat but behind closed doors...things can get messy. Where upright citizens are deemed downright boring. Where the only missing piece of the puzzle is you, dear reader.

A unique and irresistible murder mystery set at a remote hunting lodge where everyone is a suspect, including the erratic detective on the scene - a remarkable debut that gleefully upends the rules of the genre.

An isolated hunt club. A raging storm. Three corpses, discovered within four days. A cast of monied, scheming, unfaithful characters.

When private detective Adam McAnnis joins an old college friend for the Bicentennial weekend at the exclusive West Heart club in upstate New York, he finds himself among a set of not-entirely-friendly strangers. Then the body of one of the members is found at the lake's edge; hours later, a major storm hits. By the time power is restored on Sunday, two more people will be dead..."

The question has to be asked, does it really upend the genre?

Thank you to Netgalley and the Publishers for this Advanced Readers Copy of West Heart Kill by Dann McDorman!

West Heart Kill starts by setting the atmosphere, both for the book and for the mystery, and spends a lot of time in dialogue with the reader, describing what a mystery lover feels and why. It's hard to decide whether the asides and tangents are too precious or set just the right sour tone. There are many similarities to Anthony Horowitz's Susan Ryeland and especially Hawthorne and Horowitz books. The mystery at the center is fairly pedestrian, so the novelty must come in the way the "case" is presented, and, for the thoughtful, veteran murder reader, I think it does a respectable and engrossing job.

Beach read. Easy going, nothing complex. I found the characters unrelatable and really didn't feel any strong connection or care what happened.

West Hart Kill features all the staples of a murder mystery: an isolated hunting lodge, a raging storm, a private detective, and a string of puzzling murders. Dann McDorman's book offers much more than the standard mystery novel, however, thanks to its metatextual exploration of the genre.

The book opens like this: "This murder mystery, like all murder mysteries, begins with the evocation of what the reader understands to be its atmosphere." The book constantly calls attention to itself and to its readers, playing with both the expectations of and reactions to stock elements of the mystery genre. The writing is polarizing. Readers will either love or hate the style. I am a fan of texts that are aware of being texts, so I enjoyed the writing style as much as I enjoyed the plot. This was a fun read for mystery fans looking for something completely new!

Thanks to Netgalley and Knopf for gifting me a pre-release copy. Below you'll find my honest review.

I'm really torn on how to rate this one, because it's absolutely unique and brilliant in its own right, but some of that uniqueness turned it sour for me.

I liked the characters - it felt very much like an old-timey, Agatha Christie era murder mystery story. I liked that the characters weren't really all that likeable half the time, even the detective, and I liked that there were a lot of twists in who people really were on the inside.

I liked the mystery - a death, another death, another death, they just kept coming. I liked that one of those deaths was completely and entirely unexpected for me and subverted my expectations.

I liked the unique style choices the author made - at one point, the novel becomes a screenplay, which was a very clever and interesting way to show the scenes.

BUT, all of that being said, the non-stop style choices, the swaps between tenses, the jumping into lessons on the history of mystery writing, the charming-at-first bits about how the reader interacts with the story and has certain assumptions/guesses/etc.... these things all became tedious and distracting. Every few pages, you're pulled out of the story for another aside, and after a while, it just became hard to stay engrossed in the actual mystery.

Couple this with a highly unsatisfying ending, and I just couldn't say I loved it like I wanted to when I started. I still enjoyed the novelty and clever shtick for much of it, so I will give it a solid, yet average, three out of five stars.

I can see this being off-putting for many readers, but I was into the 'deconstruction-lite' playfulness of the story. In that way, it reminded me of mid-century mysteries that tried to do something a little different or unexpected with the usual tropes. The mystery itself wasn't the most satisfying, but I thought the writing was good and it was more than just run-of-the-mill. I'll definitely keep an eye out for what McDorman does next.

My first thought when I started reading this book was that it was going to be really cleverly written. It turned out that that was probably the biggest problem with the book. The author was so busy trying to be clever he forgot he was supposed to be writing a good story about an intriguing mystery with engaging characters. For most of the book I felt like I was in a lecture series with what could have been an enjoyable mystery only referred to in passing. I felt like the author’s main reason for writing the book was to point out how knowledgeable he was about the history of the mystery genre.

Every time the story would begin to pick up some momentum and become the least bit engaging; boom, there would be a totally mood killing break. Do we really need almost a page devoted to defining the word mystery or paragraphs devoted to Dashiel Hammett’s “Flitcraft’s Parable” or the various methods of murder? Besides breaking the already tenuous flow of the story, the unintended result of all these little asides was that it was extremely hard to keep track of the various characters. Of course, if they were to simply be filler, they succeeded admirably because they filled a lot of pages.

The actual murder mystery itself could have been entertaining had it been given more attention. All the elements were certainly there but it seemed the author was more interested in writing an unconventional book than an enjoyable one.

My copy of this book was provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. My thanks to the the author, the publisher, and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review it.