Reviews
The author is a little heavy-handed at times, but the mystery is challenging, and there is a good plot twist at the end.
so slow so flat so boring but still made it in the end for the reveal and my god was i disappointed
Good “who done it” but it was a slow burner and didn’t catch or maintain my attention super well
⭐️3 An okay-ish book. One of the most appealing aspects of this book is how fast-paced it is. In a few sittings, you could finish the book. It was difficult to connect with or care about any of the characters, so I can't say much about them. In truth, I sometimes lost track of which of the nine people listed on the list was which, since they were barely distinguishable from each other and unmemorable. The character of Jay Coates, however, stood out for me primarily because he reminded me of Patrick Bateman from American Psycho. He literally screams Patrick Bateman. IYKYK. While the twist (the revealed killer) was okay, the reasoning and the 'why' were truly underwhelming and disappointing. Further, the end of the book was frankly dissatisfying and lacklustre. In spite of its slight similarities to Peter Swanson's Eight Perfect Murders, this book pales in comparison. Despite this, Nine Lives is just fine. Not the most impressive mystery thriller I've read this year, or even by Peter Swanson, but certainly not the most awful. I definitely need to read Agatha Christie's 'And Then There Were None', since the premise just intrigues me.
4.25
this really was just not interesting or thrilling and the twist was boring. not super shocked cause i didn’t like and then there were none either lol. seems like swanson is only getting worse :/
This is Swanson's take on And Then There Were None. And it was fantastic. A group of strangers, with no seeming link, is dying, one by one. Who is doing it and why? It was a predictable story, due to the nod to the Christie novel, but it had an unexpected twist at the end. Thanks to #NetGalley and #WilliamMorrow for the #ARC.
I read this in one day, which as a slow reader with a 14 month old, that's pretty good. I enjoyed it. The author didn't go too deep into the characters, which is okay with me since there are so many. If it was too deep, I think I'd have a hard time keeping them straight. Overall, I did enjoy it. It would have gotten 5 stars if it weren't for the ending and the WHO of the WHY (can't say more without a spoil tag, which I'd rather not do).
Rating: 2.5 stars I won't go on too long about it. Well, let's start from the obvious: This is a love letter to And Then There Were None. Actually, this is a way too long love letter with to many POVs to keep the story's pace enjoyable. Secondly, if you've read And Then There Were None you might feel like the story is spoiled to you, there's not enough differences to make it distinguished (it's not the same story, but if you've read the inspiration, you know what to expect and what might be the reason). I did enjoy the book at the beginning. I loved being introduced to all the names on the list and seeing how different they are. What I do consider being a positive thing is that I didn't have to go back and remind myself who the current character is and what they do because their internal thoughts and POVs read differently from one another. But, this was at least a 100 pages to long and after a while I got tired of shifting from that many POVs. The reveal was okay. Nothing special, nothing jaw dropping... It was expected. I'm a bit sad that this is my first Peter Swanson because I do like the writing style. I think I'll give another one a chance sooner than later.
Listen, this book was a totally standard thriller. It's super fast paced, you can figured out what's happening before the reveal if you're paying close enough attention - and that was satisfying, but it fell kind of flat for me. I really enjoyed the first two Peter Swanson books I read, but the second two have been lackluster for sure. This book, like his last, had a few things that left a bad taste in my mouth. There were several scenes with slurs that didn't further the story at all and just felt like Swanson wanted a pass to use those words. The preoccupation with a specific book didn't really come back around either - and felt like it was trying to play off the success of "8 Perfect Murders". Additionally, the characters all kind of sucked and there's no character development at all. (view spoiler)[Like the reasoning behind the list is just so ridiculous and like truly men would rather kill nine people than go to therapy. (hide spoiler)]
This booked is over hyped imo. The story premise was great, I love the way it was written. BUT it had a boring ending. I was really expecting something more exciting. Definitely not a book for someone who likes to take their time reading a book, I read this in 2 days & was still confused by which character was which.
I really enjoyed this book! It is definitely a short, one sitting type of mystery. I can't really say if it was predictable because I didn't have time to come up with too many theories, I just kept reading to learn more about the characters. This was my first book by Peter Swanson and I'm definitely going to read more works by him. I especially admired how he was able to flesh out so many characters and make me like them and care about them in such a short amount of pages! I decided to rate it 4 stars since the ending explanation seemed a little bit too convenient and simplified in some parts but I still had a great time with it.
