Title: The Appeal
Author: Janice Hallett
Publisher: Viper Books
Synopsis:
IN A TOWN FULL OF SECRETS
SOMEONE WAS MURDERED.
SOMEONE WENT TO PRISON.
AND EVERYONE’S A SUSPECT.
CAN YOU UNCOVER THE TRUTH?Dear Reader,
Enclosed are documents relating to the events surrounding the Fairway Players’ staging of All My Sons, and the tragic death of one of its members. Another member is currently in prison for the crime. We have reason to suspect that they are innocent, and that there were far darker secrets that have yet to be revealed.
We believe that the killer has given themselves away. It’s there in writing, hidden in the emails, texts, and letters. Will you accept the challenge? Can you uncover the truth? Do you dare?
My review:
I absolutely loved this unique and entertaining novel! Told through ‘evidence’ including emails, text messages and more, given to law students to try to solve the who, what and why in this strange case which ultimately leads to the death of someone – but who?
From the first page I was completely sucked in. The correspondence is between various members of an amateur dramatics group putting on a show, as they discover that Martin, the head of the group,’s granddaughter Poppy has cancer. There follows a huge appeal to raise money for some experimental treatment from abroad. What we, as the readers, and the two people the documents are given to (law students Olufemi Hassan and Charlotte Holroyd) aren’t sure of is what exactly happens and who was involved. We’re trying to work all this out alongside Olufemi (Femi) and Charlotte.
I went into this book without knowing much about it, despite all the hype – I knew it was an unusual format but not much else, and I’m really glad about this, so I won’t say any more about the storyline. However, the way it’s written is truly engaging. It’s entertaining, witty, it makes you smile as you pick up on things the person writing the letter/ email/ text perhaps doesn’t realise, and it kept me completely intrigued. It gets a bit confusing at times because there is a large group of characters in this novel – a LOT of people involved in the show and they each have plenty of family which feature too – so it’s worth bookmarking the ‘who’s who’ list at the start of the novel to refer back to.
I’d really recommend this novel to anyone who fancies reading in a different format (and it’s surprisingly easy to get absorbed in this novel because of the very readable way Janice Hallett writes) and if you fancy trying to solve it yourself. I didn’t manage to solve it – at all! – but I REALLY enjoyed the journey to get there and am looking forward to reading the author’s new novel, The Twyford Code!
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[…] Twyford Code is the much anticipated follow up to The Appeal [read my review here], one of my favourite reads of 2021. The Twyford Code once again uses an original format to relay […]