The Book Club Murders - Alan Gorevan

The Book Club Murders - Alan Gorevan - ★★★★

- October 03, 2023

AUTHOR: Alan Gorevan

GENRE: Thriller

RATING: 4 stars.

In a Nutshell: A fast-paced thriller set around the members of a book club. Murders and mayhem combined with complicated characters provide an entertaining ride.

Story Synopsis:

When thirty-year-old Izzy ran away from her abusive partner and moved into her recently deceased aunt’s house in the little seaside town of Dun Laoghaire, she was hoping for a quieter and safer time, in which she could forget her past trauma and focus on herself and her future. When her aunt’s neighbour invites Izzy to join their local book club, Izzy feels like it would be a great way of getting a fresh start. However, not a single member of the book club, nor their spouses, comes without their share of baggage. Combine this with her ex, who is not ready to accept the end of their relationship, and Izzy’s fresh start might not be so imminent, after all.

The story comes to us from the third person perspective of Izzy and various other characters.

Bookish Yays:

🔥 The characters come from various backgrounds in terms of financial status and job status. Their personalities are also distinct, ranging from the busybody and the snooty to the trendy and the laidback. The book club contains only women members, but their spouses are an equally important part of the story. As such, we get a medley of backstories and secrets, with each character having a clear role to play in the proceedings.

🔥 The author knows his locational setting well, and it shows! The description of Dun Laoghaire, its culture, its small town vibe, the Gardai, the library – every tiny detail connected to the Irish town serves to add a layer of authenticity to the proceedings, no matter how wild the ride gets.

🔥 The chapters are short and snappy, with many of them ending on mini cliffhangers. Moreover, as the narrative shifts across various characters with every chapter, we see multiple arcs unfolding at once and through them, multiple suspenseful chapter-ends. The whole experience is complicated and yet so much fun!

🔥 The start is slightly perplexing, as there are too many character pairs to keep track of. But once you start recognising them, the going is very smooth as the author makes each person behave distinctly. Moreover, every character has an easily distinguishable name, so there’s no confusion over similar-sounding names.

🔥 I love how fast-paced the story is, despite the number of characters and subplots. It never relaxes its tempo, making sure that I stay invested throughout.

🔥 The final 25% is especially thrilling, delivering exactly as this genre should. I hate extended infodumps at the end of mysteries and thrillers, so it was nice to see the ending of this book use a combination of flashbacks plus character conversations to fill in the blanks. The flashbacks keeps the action direct, rather than making us learn everything retrospectively through the character’s narration.

🔥 I like how Adam also gets a voice. Usually, the abusive ex appears to us only through the eyes of the victim. But seeing Adam's thoughts and actions from his own perspective was creepy and added greatly to the experience.

🔥 The title already tells you that there will be multiple deaths at or related to the book club. So it's an interesting game to figure out which character is going to kick the bucket. I felt like I was making case notes and character studies throughout the start. Further, most of the characters aren’t likeable. As such, even guessing which one of them you want dead is a tricky business. 😄

🔥 While the main cast is white, there are some key Chinese-origin characters. Through some of the townspeople’s interactions with them, we get a glimpse of how racism is a part of life for anyone who looks or sounds different. As some of this is pretty offensive, it provides an indicator of the said characters’ narrow-mindedness. This is exactly how racism works in the actual world.

Bookish Mixed Bags:

🎆 I had expected the book club to pay a greater role in the plotline. (A part of me had expected a closed-door mystery where the members of a book club are rounded up by a book-hating maniac, or maybe by someone who hated the book chosen for discussion. Wouldn’t that have been something!? 😄) However, there’s only one scene set during an actual book club meeting, which was entertaining, no doubt. The references to books are also limited only to the start. So what I got was good, but I wanted far more, considering the title.

🎆 One of the characters makes a gender transition announcement during the course of events. While I loved the way the complications associated with such a coming-out were incorporated in the plot, I also feel like the transition was (mostly) portrayed in too idealistic a way. Considering how many busy bodies there were in the group, there would have been far more gossip than portrayed. The other characters’ easy switchover to the new name was also unrealistic.

🎆 Izzy supposedly has Sjögren's syndrome, a disorder of the immune system. I had never heard of this disorder, and so I was curious to see how it fit into the plot. But for the most part, it was used only to interject timely bouts of coughing. I wish it had been focused upon more, especially considering how she was trying alternative non-allopathic treatments for it. At the same time, it was nice to learn about a new disorder. Awareness never hurts!

Bookish Nays:

💣 One woman character’s internal thoughts connected to her body left me wondering whether that content was written in sarcasm or as a joke or just as a silly way of letting us know her personality. One line in particular – “Armpit hair long enough to plait” – was too cringey for my liking. Luckily, there’s not too much of this in the plot.

💣 Some minor plot points, including the one about Izzy’s health, were left aside without sufficient closure.

All in all, this was quite an entertaining ride. It did have certain OTT elements, but those were quite limited, and such farfetched situations are anyway part and parcel of this genre nowadays. So I just kept my logical hat aside and enjoyed the journey, going with the flow merrily. I wanted a fun popcorn thriller, and the book delivered! Count me in to try more books by this author.

Recommended to all thriller fans.

Content triggers: Murders (Duh!), self-harm, transphobia, minor racism, gaslighting.

My thanks to Zooloo’s Book Tours and author Alan Gorevan for a complimentary copy of “The Book Club Murders”, and for allowing me to be a part of this blog tour. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.

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Blurb:

When Izzy O’Brien flees the city centre apartment she shared with her controlling partner, she relocates to the seaside town of Dun Laoghaire, and the house she inherited from her aunt.

Isolated and insecure, Izzy is relieved to be embraced by a tightknit group of female neighbours, who invite her to join their book club.

However, the town is not as sleepy as she thinks.

And her ex-boyfriend is not ready to let her go.

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