"I'm really sorry, it just was not that good. People calling this the next "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" are wrong in a myriad of ways.

First, the writing is just not good. The dialogue is stilted at best and, at times, completely ridiculous. I actually laughed at some of the things the characters said. And they were not supposed to be funny. I don't know how much of this is attributable to the translation, but it needs work. A lot of it.

Second, the protagonist is an asshole. And not a likeable asshole. Not the kind you root for. He's a sad-sack asshole (what are you even still doing married to your wife and paying for her shit? Divorce her! DIVORCE. HER. What are you thinking, you moron?). The man is completely unrelateable and he doesn't even have the edge of brilliance to push him over into grudging respect territory. He's lazy and pretty damn slow on the the uptake (thanks for pulling his shit together, convenient sidekick!). I greeted his troubles with a resounding "meh". If you want to get better, make some effort. If you don't, stop whining about it. My sympathy is deep and wide, but not for you.

Third, the plot twist was not a twist. Was it supposed to be? Because I guessed who the attractive guy was and who was holding Merete in about the third chapter. It was not a stretch. It was not subtle. Don't try to make this some sort of edge-of-your-seat type thing if you are going to spell out the mystery like this is some sort of elementary school mystery book. I know who did it. All that does is make me even more annoyed that the police can't figure it out.

I will not be reading more of this. Off to cleanse my palate with a reread of Steig Larson."

"How come a novel about a high risk reality game show and survival becomes such a boring, lackluster story? How a game which is suppossedly a hide and seek becomes a gam where every body interacts with everybody and nothing about "close your eyes and count to 10"? Where is the suspense? Where are the high stakes? Is this really a reality game show?

I'm sorry. This book is a big mess. Everything is in chaos, the structure is so wrong. Multiple POVs lead to disorientation in the plot, resulting in lack of focus in the real game and real suspense. Why do I have to care about Adele's runaway criminal husband? Why do I have to care about the perspectives of Adele's kids? Are they related to the game anyway? Why do I want to read about the livestream and the podcast? What is the point of the POV of the FBI agent? It seems to me that the author has so many potential ideas and tries to jam all in one book without actually alighning them into a sensible story. Besides the game, we also explore the relationship between the member crew of the show and how corrupted they are. Excuse me, why? I don't need to read about their greed and ambition. All I want is the suspense in this high risk game, not people keep talking to each other. This book never delivers what it promises in the premise.
All the characters are flat and they are all noisy to me. Mav, the host, is the most annoying person.

There is no twist, to be honest. By the time I reached the part which you might call a twist, I didn't care any more. The book was beyond redemption.

"

"Deviates between insightful and poignant assholery. As Mark Twain says, "Anybody can have ideas–the difficulty is to express them without squandering a quire of paper on an idea that ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph." However, I do feel like I have learnt a few fun facts from this book."

"I re-read THE PLOT in anticipation of this and, unfortunately, this was a real bummer. I started a little baffled, not sure what Korelitz would do now. It turns out she is doing... exactly the same thing. Somehow this sequel is the same book as the first, despite removing its protagonist. Except this time it all feels like a retread, lower stakes, nothing new to discover, like a book I'd already read.

Once again we have a novelist with a bad attitude as our protagonist. This time it's Anna who, it turns out, just happens to have written an amazing first novel in a very "What, like it's hard?" fashion. I learned from the first book that for Korelitz's satire to work, you just have to accept it and roll with it. So I did. And there's some funny stuff, but less. And so much of it is Anna's frustration and annoyance with her readers. What we're really getting at is how some people get to move to the front of the line, avoid the typical difficulties of getting published, not due to any talent but who they know. Anna is one of these. It's a lot less interesting when there is no struggle, and when Anna's book is not necessary. Anna is, clearly, set for life though it's completely unclear what she wants out of that life.

Once again we have a campaign of mysterious messages saying they know our novelist's secret. Which is the same secret as the last book. It's unclear why this must happen through another strange campaign of letters and notes, why someone doesn't just come out and make an accusation. Last time there was a reason for the secrecy. This time? Not so much.

And once again we have the same characters. Somehow we do not have a single notable new character in this book. Everyone is someone we already know. This bored me most of all. You're not even going to try to bring a new angle? We're just going to go back to talk to the exact same people we talked to in the last book? Yawn.

There's a twist, but it's not a particularly interesting one. Because it turns out that without all the layers of motives in the previous book, that there is no bigger thing beneath it all. It's just who has the author decided knows the secret. Not why they might care about the secret or be involved in the secret, just how they found out. Has an eeny meeny miney mo feel of who will be responsible.

Anna moves through the story with the same lack of empathy she did before. She is a hard character to relate to. At least Jake wanted something. What does Anna want? She used to want so much, she used to have this intense drive. But now what exactly is she fighting for? She doesn't enjoy writing novels or going on book tours. What does she enjoy? Who are her friends? What does she get out of it if she manages to keep her secrets?

Worst of all, the book feels inflated and repetitive. Scenes play out much longer than they need to. Anna thinks the same thoughts over and over again. It would have been really easy to trim 50 pages out of this. There wouldn't have been much left, but there is not much there to start with!

It isn't all that fun to follow a narcissistic sociopath through a plot we've already read."