Book Review - The Name of the Game was Murder by Joan Lowery Nixon

Hello all!

Well, here's the promised weekly book review, although I'm reading another Joan Lowery Nixon at the moment, so 2 reviews this week seem to be on the cards ☺. Ahem...

This was a good book. It wasn't superb, and it wasn't awful. It was just good.

It is about a young teenage girl, Samantha, or Sam as she is generally known, who goes to stay with her uncle Augustus Trevor on a remote island. When she arrives she discovers that her uncle has invited... ahem, blackmailed, a bunch of celebrites to a house party. He has invited thaem because in a book he has written he has revealed a terrible, career-destroying secret about each one of them, his wife Thea Trevor included. He gives them a chance to have their secrets removed from the manuscript by solving some clues relating to their dark secret.

The next day, having only released the first set of clues, Augustus is found bludgeoned to death, and the hunt is on for the celebrites and Sam to find the clues, and the manuscript, and to save their careers.

I loved the plotline, the characters, the ideas and twists and unexpected things, but all in all I really wish it had been longer. That's my main wish. I would have  also liked to really find out about the characters, their backgrounds, what makes them who they are.

I really liked the original idea though. A very spooky and strange thought, and an excellent plot for a mystery/crime novel.

I thought the ending was a bit sudden, and that the final chapters could have maybe been lengthened and split up more. Also, I felt that I would have preferred to know what happens to the murderer of Augustus Trevor at the end, instead of the cliffhanger we are given.

All in all, I'd give it a 6.5/10. Am I allowed to do that??

OK, if half-marks aren't allowed, I'll give it a 6. But only because it just...wasn't what it could have been. Kind of confusing, I know. Sorry about that...

Anyway, better go and do homework... Ewwwwwwwwwwwwww.

Byee

Dayzee xx