Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own.

I must admit that Paula Hawkin's books have been hit or miss for me. (for example: I rated The Girl on the Train 3 stars), and unfortunately this book was a miss for me. I didn't really feel invested in any of the characters and the plot seemed slow. I was expecting this book to be a fast paced thriller and for me, unfortunately, it wasn't. With that being said, I may try the audiobook when that comes out and see if I enjoy the book better.

Many thanks again to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to review this book.

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The first 2/3 of the book were clear-your-schedule, extraordinarily addictive—the last 1/3 needs to be rewritten.

On the small, isolated island of Eris lived a reclusive artist, Vanessa, with her long-time companion, Grace. When Vanessa departs this world, she surprisingly bequeaths her art collection to her nemesis.

As the art is examined, a thread of mystery will unravel.

Full disclosure: The publisher sent me this book with a painted canvas bookmark. Holding it between my fingers transformed the book into an incredible, immersive experience.

The first 200 pages of the book fly by, weaving together many mysterious, thrilling storylines.

As the last 100 pages loomed, the suspense is breathtaking—how will Paula Hawkins pull together all of the various threads?

But she didn’t.

The ending is lame, forgettable, and there are still unanswered questions. The paragraphs and chapters should have been trimmed, and the tone seemed a bit off (and not in a good way, overly focused on Grace).

Hmm meh. I had such hopes for this from the summary, but I feel like I was tricked a little bit. This is a sloooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow burn story. It's hard to really even call it a thriller because I didn't even really know what the point of the story was for most of it. Mostly flashbacks from a narcissistic , flighty artist (nothing new, fictional artists are ALWAYS written this way) and current POVs that are a snooze. It felt like most of these characters are stereotypes and nothing new or unique or really that interesting about them, despite how incredible the first chapter sounds. I only kept reading because I was waiting for some BIG shocking twist, but all the reveals were super obvious from the start.

The writing was dark and sometimes really beautiful, but since the plot was glacial, even the writing became just too repetitive. The setting is perfect for a thriller or horror story and I loved picturing the tide covering up the road.

Thanks to the publisher for a free ARC; my thoughts and review are my own.

Paula Hawkins is back with a great mystery novel. I haven't been loving her last few books, they were okay. But this one is *chef's kiss*. Maybe it's the setting of an island or the interesting characters, but I really enjoyed this novel. The mystery has just enough twists and turns that it keeps you engaged, but not so many that you lose what the original plot was in the first place. While I am not sure that anything will capture the "Girl on the Train" energy...this is a good go.

I loved the mystery and atmosphere of this one. I also liked getting glimpses into Vanessa's past with the Interatitials and the addition of the art world. I struggled with the pace though. It was a bit too slow moving for me at points. I really enjoyed the choice of a island in Scotland to be a focal point.

I am typically a fan of Paula Hawkins however this book just did not do it for me. It was well written, hence the 3 stars, but I just did not enjoy the art world setting. A good thriller to me keeps be guessing and this felt very predictable and slow. I can see others enjoying but overall this was just not for me.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this book in advance of publication.

Okay I’ll start with what I enjoyed…the atmospheric writing, the glimpses of obsession and suspense, and the setting (a Scottish Island).

Unfortunately I struggled with the majority of this book…3 stars is honestly generous. I would say the last 80% of the book was somewhat thrilling. But before that it was lackluster, confusing, and didn’t hold or grasp my attention.

Even though this book wasn’t my cup of tea, it could be yours! Check out the synopsis!

Fans of psychological suspense will love The Blue Hour by Paula Hawkins, author of Gone Girl.

When artist Vanessa Chapman dies she leaves her entire art collection to a foundation. Vanessa lived and worked at her studio on a remote Scottish island that could only be accessed during low tide. After a showing of her work, the curators discover a human bone in one of the pieces. Could it be related to her missing husband Julian who disappeared twenty years earlier, while they were in the midst of a divorce? When the curator of the collection goes to visit the island more secrets are revealed.

The island setting contributes to a sense of foreboding that builds throughout the story. I loved the detailed references to the art world. This slow burn mystery will appeal to readers of gothic stories like Rebecca or readers of Lisa Jewell’s Then She was Gone and A.J. Finn’s The Woman in the Window.

Thanks to Mariner Books and NetGalley for the advanced reader’s copy.

Twenty years ago, Julian Chapman went missing. At the time, he was in the process of a divorce from his wife Vanessa, a famous artist who lived on a reclusive island in Scotland. An island that you can only access at low tide. Now, Vanessa is dead and her works have been left to an art foundation. After a gallery showing, an anthropologist contacts the foundation to let them know that the bone in the piece is human. Could it belong to missing Julian Chapman? And what happened on that island all those years ago?

This is a slow burn mystery. I did not enjoy any of the characters and the pretentiousness of the art world. The twists were predictable and the ending was not very satisfying. Not a great fit for me, but if you are into slow burns this will be for you!

Thanks to the publisher, the author, and netgalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Unfortunately, this just didn't work for me. I loved the details that were included about art and the art world, but ultimately this just felt too slow for me. I know it's difficult when every book is compared to Hawkins' debut, Gone Girl, but for me, this just didn't work.

Synopsis: After the death of a reclusive artist on a remote Scottish isle, her former best friend and an art gallery employee begin to discover the island’s secrets.

Thoughts: I am sorry to say I really was not feeling this one. I did enjoy the format of multiple POVs and timelines, with journal entries interspersed throughout. The author did a great job of building a sense of foreboding throughout the story, and the setting felt very eerie and claustrophobic. It was a bit slow for me, and I honestly just didn’t like any of the characters enough to care about their stories. I certainly don’t want to dissuade anyone from reading this book though, as the writing itself is really fantastic! If the premise sounds good to you or you’re a fan of the author, it’s definitely worth a read.

Read this if you like:
🎨 art
🎨 psychological thrillers
🎨 atmospheric, claustrophobic settings
🎨 slow burn

Poor, Paula Hawkins. The book world is never going to recover from her glorious debut - The Girl on the Train.

I’ve felt her follow-up books didn’t provide as much compelling force as the first, but The Blue Hour caught my interest.

Mostly, I love an atmospheric setting. This one is an isolated Scottish island that’s only accessible so long as the tide is out. It’s not the first book I’ve read with a place like that (ii, Daisy Darker), and it’s so bewitching to think about the control the ocean has.

I’m down for an enigmatic female lead and we essentially got two.

With Vanessa, we got a peek into the past through “interstitials” as she talked about her life as an artist near the beginning of her career and how she dealt with an unfaithful husband. Let’s just say, revenge is a dish best served cold.

But she’s dead and gone now (not a spoiler) and Grace gave her fair share of main character energy, though with several marks and a personality teetering between quirky and qualifiedly insane.

The slow burn didn’t bother me but halfway through I kind of lost my place and interest in it because I was fairly certain how it would turn out.

For the most part, I was right.

However, the vibes are mysterious, and the characters are moody and unpredictable, which is the closest I’ll feel to spooky season right now since it’s still sunny and 75 in San Diego.

When Vanessa, an artist, dies, she leaves her work to someone she loathed. It’s curious, but the collection’s curator visits the tidal island to learn more about a piece that has come under scrutiny. The island holds many secrets. Fans of psychological suspense will devour this..

I think it is probably time I call it with Paula Hawkins. This book just did not seem to do anything. There was a lot of talk about the art and the island. I loved the idea of the island. It was basically a character. But the story was just SO slow! Nothing seemed to happen till the very end. I finished it and was let down. I guess I expected something more thrilling rather than this slow burn.

A shocking discovery is made about a famous artist's sculpture that could shed light on the disappearance of her ex-husband years ago.  Since she recently passed away, her estate is being managed by her friend, Grace, who lives alone on an island unreachable by the mainland for twelve hours a day.  As the investigation progresses, a strange web of lies is unraveled.

Thoughts 💭
The mood of this story is quickly set by the creepy sculpture, the isolated home on an island, and the reputation of Vanessa. Things are slowly revealed through thoughts of multiple characters, articles, and emails.  Since there is so much going on, it's hard to get a grasp of what's actually happening at first.  I think the idea has a lot of promise and a lot of mystery and intrigue.  With that being said, the story was interesting but didn't blow me away.  Quite a few parts dragged and were hard to get through. This is worth checking out, though, if you're a fan of the author.

I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Starting with her splashy debut as a top-of-the-charts thriller writer ("The Girl on the Train", 2016), Paula Hawkins has steadily emerged as a gifted writer of chilling psychological fiction. a la her pop-literary forebears Ruth Rendell and—less distinctively—Patricia Highsmith.

FROM WHODUNIT TO "LITERARY" NOVEL. Hawkins’ four novels to date have displayed a pronounced drift toward the more expansive social landscapes of traditional (dare we say serious?) 20th and 21st century fiction. Rendell, significantly, embraces these arguably more complex models in her later novels (e.g., 2010’s "Tigerlily’s Orchids" and 2014’s "The Girl Next Door"). And we see a similar progression in the recent novels of the equally brilliant Tana French ["The Witch Elm" (2018), "The Searcher" (2020), and "The Hunter" (2024)].

"The Blue Hour" displays this creative evolution in spades. Hawkins depicts a world centered in the British arts/philanthropy realm. Some years before the book begins, dying painter/sculptor Vanessa Chapman has left all her extant, unsold works and personal papers to her former gallerist, an imperious mainstay of the British upper crust, who leaves an equally haughty family to prosecute his affairs when he dies, quite mysteriously, of course.

But complications arise: Vanessa'’s works and papers live with her long-time companion Grace Winters. Grace resides on Eris, a craggy-spooky--and appropriately remote--island just off the West coast of Scotland. Because of tidal factors, Eris is only accessible 10 hours a day. Could we ask for a more brooding presence to supercharge the eerie underpinnings of this tale? And Grace, a cranky hermit, is an obstacle to the terms of Vanessa’s will. She’s not keen on sharing her Vanessa with the world.

THREE CHARACTERS SHARE THE NARRATION. "The Blue Hour" is a tale dripping with backstory, a narrative burden shared by Grace, art critic James Becker, and Vanessa herself, whose contemporary reflections appear as interstitial fragments throughout the novel.
This is the narrative motor that drives The Blue Hour, as it glides along irresistibly on the well-worn tracks of its Jamesian prototypes, and only rarely hinting at the shocking violence (and betrayals) undergirding the relationships of its principals. When, late in the book, this violence ultimately breaks through the tortured surface of the story, stubborn Ironies and reversals (both of human relationships and novelistic convention) break over Eris like a howling storm from the Irish Sea.

A thriller-diller, this one.

I'm not even sure what to think, but I think this was a great read! The characters weren't super likeable, and even though Vanessa had passed, she wasn't really either based on the diary entries and personal papers shared throughout the novel. That said, when Becker went to the island to speak with Grace, I always held my breath because this island sanctuary seemed so sinister and foreboding to me. I couldn't see the peacefulness shared by Vanessa in her journal entries, nor could I see the appeal of why Grace stayed. Then, everything came together for me! There is kind of a reference to a Roald Dahl story, "The Landlady", towards the end of the novel, and I gasped! The ending is somewhat ambiguous but also not. We can guess, but we do not know for certain how it ends. Loved it!

This is a slow burn story but once you get to the halfway mark it starts to pick up. I really did enjoy this one and look forward to reading more of Hawkins future novels.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for my gifted copy.

I really wanted to love this one, but it's just slower paced enough that it didn't capture my attention. I think if you are really into art, you may really love all the art details throughout.

Unfortunately this book sucked! It got pretty good at the very end but it was soooooo slowwwww leading up to it. Went so deep into the artist and art world and I DID NOT CARE. I was expecting The Girl on the Train level thrills but this book was not thrilling. It was barely even interesting! Maybe it’s because I didn’t like the setting or characters but man I could not get into this and it took me forever to finish and the shocking ending was barely worth all the drudgery leading up to it. It was well written and thoughtful of course, and maybe those more interested in art would be into it, but to me the storyline just dragged along like walking through mud.