Review: The Appeal by Janice Hallett
Star Rating: 3 Stars
Grade: B
Thank you to Atria Books for gifting me with a copy of this ARC!
Release Date: January 25, 2021
You will either love this book, or think it is just ok, there is no in between. For me, I was excited for the format of the book - it is written entirely through emails, and text message correspondences. At times, the format did seem boring, I wish there was parts of the book where the author would’ve broken away from just email and text messages and add a little more regular formatting to help the story move along. It is a daring concept, and for that I applaud the author. I was excited to get this ARC and attempt this formatting idea, and I am not regretful for giving it a chance as I did mainly enjoy it.
The storyline is just okay. There are a lot of characters in this book, the tagline says it all, “15 suspects.” It becomes hard to keep up with all the characters, what they’re doing and how they tie into everything else going on when the only narration we get is through emails and texts. Again, this is where I thought the author could have broken away from the format to add more clarity to the storyline more often. The murder this story surrounds doesn’t happen until page 300, and the ending does feel rushed while the first 300 pages feels 100 pages too long. I really liked the idea that the reader is supposed to put themselves in the shoes of law students who are going over this case for an appeal process.
The book wasn’t a chore to read, I felt whenever I did pick it up I was able to get through 100 plus pages with relative ease, and there isn’t much brain power needed to get through the book. Overall, it fell a little short in my opinion. The storyline felt long in the beginning and then once the actual murder happened, the ending felt rushed together and didn’t give adequate time for the readers to try to find out the killer themselves. I felt slightly annoyed that the ending seemed to tie in information that wasn't known throughout the entire book, that the law students and their mentor lawyer were just privy to. I think the book is a solid B - I don’t regret the read whatsoever. I do think that the difference for readers is whether you like the format or not, and I did not know I didn’t like the format until I was reading the book. Kudos to the author for stepping out of the box in terms of writing format, it is definitely a risk and I applaud her for that!