This is the first book I have read by Marie Benedict and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I will need to move my other TBRs by her up on my reading priorities' list. I have been intending to read the The Carnegie's Maid for a prompt this year so I am even more excited to read it and now I will try to fit The Other Einstein in as well. I find it intriguing that she has dedicated her writing efforts to focus on historical females.
This book, as the title implies, focuses on Agatha Christie. Specifically it is about the mysterious disappearance and reappearance of the famous author. Ms. Benedict's character development and description makes it easy to visualize the scenes and the characters dialogue and action as they are disclosed. The narration was a unique approach where you split back and forth in time. Alternating between the "present" day, where Mr. Christie is the narrator at the time of his wife's disappearance, and back in time from when they first up until the current events.
The choice of this split narrative becomes very apparent at the conclusion of the novel. The effect is very appropriate and makes the book that much better. My only reasoning for not assigning the novel a 5th star was the fact that the ending felt very familiar, almost as though I had read it before. This is because I just read the Agatha Christie Book Club by C.A. Larmer last year and that book goes into detail about the real life disappearance of Agatha Christie. This had the impact of my feeling as though the ending was drawn out too much but if you aren't familiar with the story of her disappearance then this would not be an issue at all.
This book is a great read for any Agatha Christie fan and since I have just started reading her books from the beginning of her publications this novel was all that much more fascinating. I was reading about the story of her writing the very books I had just read (Mysterious Affair at Styles reviewed here on my blog). It was a wonderfully fun dimension to the story.
All in all this is a wonderful book that I can highly recommend.
The Mystery of Mrs. Christie by Marie Benedict
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I thoroughly enjoyed this mystery. It was very easy to place yourself into the scenes as they were written. The characters of Mr and Mrs Christie were well written and their emotions believable
Any reader of Mrs Christie’s novels should be engaged. My only draw back was I felt I could predict the wrap up from having previously read the Agatha Christie Book Club as they went into the details of the real event of Mrs Christie’s disappearance. I kept feeling as though I’d read this book before even though I had not
View all my reviews
Challenge Prompts
The Challenge Prompts I will use this for are:
- Library Love #LibraryLoveChallenge Book #6
- Alphabet Soup Author Edition #AlphabetSoupAuthorChallenge "B"
- Beat the Backlist #BTB2021 #8 multiple points of view
- 20021TBR #2021ReadingChallenge #8 author you've always wanted to read
- Virtual Mount TBR #VirtualMountTBR2021 Book #6
- Back List Reader #Backlistreader Book #8
- Cloak & Dagger #CloakDaggerChal Book #5
- Historic Fiction #histficreadingchallenge Book #2
- 52 Book Club #the52bookclub2021 #11 Book With Discussion Questions Inside
- The Unofficial Magnus Archives Challenge #TMARC21 #41 Annabelle: with an unreliable narrator
- BooklistQueen #7 set in 1920s
- A Pretty Mess Challenge # 11. Based on a true story
- NJM Book Challenge #NJMBookChallenge2021 #20 author new to you
- While I was Reading #3. A book you’ve been looking forward to
- Nerd Daily #NERDREADING2021 #14 MULTIPLE PERSPECTIVES
- Bookworm #31.) Read a book that takes place in Europe
- Magic in the Books
- Book 1 #3 Includes a solemn vow
- Pick your Poison #1-3 A book about being a first time parent
- Bloggers Bookshelf #bloggersbookshelf #6 based on a real event
- 52 books in 52 weeks #2 amnesia
- Unruly Reader Bingo #19 edwardian
No comments:
Post a Comment