The Appeal: The smash-hit bestseller

If you’re looking for a book with a completely unique writing style or something to get you out of a slump — pick this up!This is an epistolary novel (the entirety of the book is formed from emails, text messages and other communications) and I LOVED IT. Addictive and unputdownable, this was so clever and so much fun to read. There is a HUGE cast (20+) of eccentric characters, which admittedly was difficult to follow at the start, but I found peoples personalities soon shone through and the character lists throughout were helpful. It was interesting how much we got a sense for each individual’s character purely through their communication style!We’re not told who was murdered straight away, yet we know it’s a murder mystery — this fact had me hooked from the first page, trying to figure out the clues and read into everything said. This is a fair chunk of a book at nearly 500 pages, but I flew through it in just two sittings. It was SO engaging and I think the most unique crime book I’ve read, alongside EVERYONE IN MY FAMILY HAS KILLED SOMEONE. The fact that this was Hallett’s debut novel is OUTSTANDING: the thought process that must have gone into this is incredible.If you love playing detective, I’d definitely recommend picking up this book! (In a physical copy, I imagine the audio would be a nightmare to follow!) 🫶🏼

Janice Hallett’s debut is a refreshingly original novel told in epistolary format and made up of emails, texts, police transcripts and WhatsApp messages. It is also an opportunity for the reader, according to the premise, to test their powers of dedication alongside law students, Olufemi (Femi) Hassan and Charlotte Holroyd, both of whom are training under Roderick Tanner QC. A client of Tanner’s is currently serving time for a murder that he believes they did not commit, with the real killer having given themselves away in the various snippets of recovered communication and he needs Femi and Charlotte to see it too as he prepares for the appeal.The Hayward’s are the alpha family in the small town of Lockwood with husband and wife, Martin and Helen, co-owning The Grange country club and the director and lead actress respectively of the Fairway Players amateur dramatics society. They either employ or cast a number of those in the local community and it pays to keep in with them, with the influential MacDonald’s slightly further down the food chain. When Martin announces their next play, clingy nurse Isabel Beck is thrilled to bring along her new colleague plus her husband, Sam and Kel Greenwood, both recently returned from voluntary work overseas and new to the area. Parts have barely been cast before Martin delivers the bombshell news that his two-year-old granddaughter, Poppy, has been diagnosed with a brain tumour. Following consultation with her oncologist the family launch a crowdfunding appeal in the hope of raising enough money to purchase an experimental drug from the US, believed to be Poppy’s best chance of survival. The sprawling plot covers everything from the fundraising effort, family tensions, issues at work for nurses Isabel and Sam as well as personal relationships and it unfolds at a brisk pace with complications aplenty. Although there are a fair number of characters involved in the events, the whole thing has a soap opera feel and it doesn’t take long to understand how everyone is connected as well as suss out their opinions of each other! Fast-moving and frequently hilarious, I was quickly hooked trying to read between the lines and lapped up the gossipy goings-on, judgy attitudes and social hierarchy within this small subset of the community.It quickly becomes apparent that there is a high degree of selectivity to the chosen information that the reader is made privy to, such as only seeing one side of a conversation to only seeing some characters through the eyes of others. At 70% Tanner reveals that what we have read is the recovered correspondence submitted at the original hearing and sets his two law students questions to explore, before challenging them to come up with their own theories. Whilst I really enjoyed the students initial discussion of the case, I was disappointed to find out that what I had read was all smoke and mirrors effectively with key pieces of information undisclosed, making it impossible for the uninformed reader to solve. When Tanner supplies additional pieces of correspondence and reveals that “three masquerade as others, one does not exist at all”, it started to feel a tad gimmicky and like Hallett’s focus shifted to delivering an overly convoluted solution with the law students left to tell all to the reader. Overall great fun but slightly too long and not quite the fair play mystery that the premise implies.

Well written and intriguing with an original format. I was very quickly gripped by this novel in which the reader is explicitly invited to play detective with the able assistance of two legal professionals who are articled clerks to a QC. They are engaged in examining a body of evidence to determine if a miscarriage of justice has taken place. This involves reviewing a case file of correspondence between parties involved in the plot and it is through this correspondence that the story unfolds. The characters really come to life through their emails to each other although we only learn about some key individuals and their actions through others. This is a very clever and effective way of constructing the narrative. The plot is very Midsomer Murders in nature, although for most of the novel we don't actually know what the crime is.I had three main problems with the novel. Firstly, it is overly long and after a very strong start begins to lose momentum about two thirds of the way through. Secondly, one of the key aspects of the crime relates to something (I can't be more specific without potentially giving it away) that I believe has been overused in crime stories. I have personally come across it several times over the years, in both film and literature so consider it a bit of a hackneyed plot device. Thirdly, you can't really work out who the killer is on your own as to do so requires uncovering a key deception without having any hard evidence or clues that it took place.Finally, at the end of the book, after what really happened has been revealed, it suddenly goes a bit weird and supernatural - maybe I misunderstood something!

It is clever and it is entertaining, and it is filled with red herrings. But it is also filled with emails and they become so convoluted and numerous they remind one of the daily deluge which should be deleted. Gleaning personality traits from them, understanding the clues (misleading, misrepresenting and misuse) becomes a bit laborious. At the same time, there is enough intrigue that keeps you plowing on til the end. Only it wasn’t the ending I wanted/enjoyed.

That's it: just don't bother buying it... Very childish and boring. It seemed promising at first, a sort of 21st century epistolary novel, but it just ended up being a teen game in book form. If that was the author's intention all along, then I've been duped into buying it, for the book was advertised as a coming from a new Agatha Christie in the making. That's a bit of an overstatement, to say the least. I ended up reading it through just for the sake of it --- maybe it would eventually surprise me. Wrong decision. Again, just don't bother.

I've enjoyed the book, especially the complex relationships between the characters and how the development takes place.I'm not a huge fan of the format though, I read way too many emails in my day to day, and I simply don't thrive through that format, which is applicable for most part of the book. Nevertheless, I believe the effect it causes helps empathising with the effort the investigators must make to disentangle the case. So, could this format be considered painful but necessary?

This is my third book by Hallett, and I absolutely love her style where you can sniff through mails and messages and transcripts, to try and solve a intelligent mystery. To me, the format brings the mystery much closer to a form of true crime, but without the guilt of having a good time at the expense of real life victims. I guess that makes me an Hallett aficionado and I will probably always read what she writes.If I had one remark to make, it is that it was my least favorite from the three books I've read of her so far. Maybe I'm overthinking this, but I got the impression that the story sometimes had to fit the messages and that made for some weird and elaborate mails or whatsapps. Instead of just writing "bit late, be there in a sec" what we all would normally do, it was more "bit late because I ran into character X who told me a dirty secret about Y, which made me want to do Z before I could run the errand A..." But I believe it might be because it is the first book that is written in this style, so it is gladly pardoned.What I also noticed is how all characters are completely awful. Really, no-one is nice or just plain normal, and in this case this is what really kept me ready later at night than was good for me, as I was routing for them all to fall flat on their faces, ha! It's been a long time since I felt that way about characters in a book. Was it a satisfying ending? I won't tell, because I don't want to give away any spoilers. All I can say is that yesterday night was really late as I was dying to know.The book is closed, I enjoyed it and can't wait to read her next mystery.

Very entertaining book, originally plotted and catching. Absolutely recommended