Joe Kessler’s Reviews > The Liar's Dictionary > Status Update

Well, that was certainly a book.

Also, do the British police just... not trace calls when someone phones in harassment and literal bomb threats to a place on a weekly basis? They don't in this story!

I try not to post spoilers here, but that twist is really obvious and really bad. (There are literally only three meaningful characters in this timeline. Who could have guessed that the person making threatening voice-disguised calls to two of them would turn out to be the only other person in the cast??)

I said before I wouldn't 1-star this book, but I might be changing my mind.

Literally the only way this could pick up is if there's a twist like the historical sections being a novel-within-a-novel recreation by the protagonist in the present. And even that would only do so much to redeem either half of the book.

This probably isn't bad enough to 1-star or DNF... but it's just so boring. No particular stakes or meaningful goals anywhere.

Okay, we have characters now at least. But maybe not a reason to care about them yet.