I really enjoyed Jonasson's "100 year old man..." when I read it a few years back. This novel is equally as quirky, bringing in historical elements with a signature flippancy while also making some really decent points (artist Irma Stern is brought in to the story in a reverent way while Hitler is dismissed, usually, as Adolf).
The story revolves around a small group who all have the aim to get revenge on a common enemy - for different reasons like family, money, etc. - and their antics leading up to the revenge could lead anywhere!
I expected this roller-coaster of not knowing where the story could lead, and wanted to love this book like I did the other, but some of the elements felt just that bit too far-fetched. While suspension of belief and logic is something you need when reading his books, there came a point I felt I was just too much.
It was still quite enjoyable, and if you liked his other books this is definitely along the same lines, but not quite as much of a favourite to me. 3.5 stars.
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for this advance copy.

I received this e-arc thanks to NetGalley and 4th Estate Books.

I loved ‘The 100 Year Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared’ and was looking forward to this one.

I found the first 10 chapters to be very long winded and boring - I literally had to force myself to read it.

It wasn’t until about 30% into the book that the plot actually started to make sense. But because I hadn’t enjoyed the beginning, I didn’t feel like it redeemed itself enough for me to like it.

I liked the concept of the story, it was very interesting. I just didn’t enjoy it unfortunately. Maybe translated works are not for me? I must say though, it did make me miss travelling!

This is another 3 and a half star book rounded up for the bonkers-ness contained within.
It's all able revenge - well the title gives that away. Revenge on Victor for wronging both his ex-wife and abandoned son. The son he abandoned in the Kenyan savanna. Abandoned to die. Little did he know that Kevin would be rescued by a Maasai medicine man and brought up as his own son. If he didn't expect that, well, he had no idea what shenanigans would ensue when said medicine man travelled to Stockholm to find Kevin when he flees the village to protect his... uhum.. yep! And what would happen when Kevin met Jenny (the ex-wife) and the two bumped into the man running a revenge company...
Let the bonkers begin...
There's nothing more I can say to prepare you for what you are about to read. If you have read this author before then you know what you are letting yourself in for. Hopefully you will enjoy it. But it is a bit bonkers and that bonkers does skirt puerile and stupid at times but doesn't really go too much over the top. Just a bit farcical at times.
But all that said, the plot really works. It's well crafted and tightly executed and actually, bonkers aside, makes sense. It's also quite emotional in places. And very funny in others. Don't read it on the bus unless you want to get glared at when you laugh out loud!
The characters are also worth investing in. Interesting though they are, they did elicit some sympathy from me as they went about their business!
All in all, a book to read and not take too seriously. A worthy way to while away a few hours. My thanks go to the Publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read this book.

OMG I cannot give it enough praise. It's fabulous. He's turned the tables, smashing all the preconceived ideas of what fiction is with this one. Blinding. If he wrote a telephone book I'd read it!

This writer pushes all my buttons! It’s like the late, great Brian Rix, if he had written novels. The story is insane, bonkers, highly inventive, surreal, quirky and like Rix, farcical. So much laughter and eyebrow raising! The narration is deadpan, explains the obvious as though you are too stupid to understand it, but that is the appeal of these books by this highly unusual and very likeable wordsmith.
A story of a Masai warrior who is part Swedish. His mother was a prostitute, his father is Victor, a throughly unpleasant, racist man, who deserves everything that happens to him! Victor wants the good life, the entry to High Society, money, power and prestige, he certainly doesn’t want a son, Kevin, when he is engaged to an art dealers daughter. He only wants to marry poor Jenny to get control of the art gallery, Victor knows nothing about Art.
Victor thinks about killing Kevin, but then dumps him in the middle of Kenya, and hopes the local predators will do that job for him. Victor is not a nice man! Through a set of highly unusual and unforeseen coincidences, Kevin and Jenny join forces at an enterprise called, Sweet, Sweet Revenge LTD, and then the fun really begins to make your head spin!
I would have loved such an organisation to exist, think of all the outstanding scores that would be settled! If you have read previous books then you are sort of prepared for this degree of lunacy that strolls across the pages, if this is your first experience of Jonas Jonasson, I do envy you the experience. I am hooked, and have read all the previous books. This book absolutely screams FILM! It could be seen as Racist, but not condescending or trivial in any way, Kevin and his Kenyan adoptive father are two of the nicest people in this madcap comedy, and above all else, we all deserve some laughter in these crazy times.
Thank you to 4th Estate and William Collins, and Netgalley for my ARC, in exchange for my honest opinion. It’s not an unbiased opinion, as I totally adore these books, and recommend them freely to all my friends, and my local library, which is sadly, still shut at the present time.
I will leave a review to Goodreads and Amazon later.

The book starts in the Maasai Mara with a bit of scene setting before the action moves to present day Sweden. Victor is a racist, nationalist Swede and is upset that his favourite hot dog stand has been taken over by an Arab who doesn't know what Vastervik mustard is. He decides that in order to change things he needs to be rich and mingle with people of influence. WIth this in mind he gets a job at an art gallery, dispute not liking art.
He arims to marry the daughter of the owner to carry out his plan, but in the meantime uses prostitutes to cater for his everyday needs.
This in turn causes a blimp in his plans, which he deals with and then carries on with his marriage plans. Let me say at this point VIctor is not a nice man.
At the same time, the problem he has dealt with is now in Kenya training to be a Maasai Warrior, but when he is told that the last part of the training involves something he has no wish to do he ups sticks and heads for Sweden.
Cue lots of misunderstandings and muddles. Roll this is with a marketing man who has set up a company called Sweet, sweet revenge which dishes out exactly that and you have a very readable book.

A book that gets better the more you read. It's the first Johansson book I have read. It has a quirky humour that took me a while to enjoy. I nearly gave up at 30% read but I'm glad I stuck with it. It is a farce which made a change from the blood and guts thrillers even if it very silly in places. 3.5 stars.
This is an honest review of a complementary ARC.

It took me a while to wrap my head around what I thought of this book. At first I hated it, hated the style and it was just getting on my nerves a little. I carried on though, and I started to get into it.

I still don’t like something about it - is it the writing style? Is it the translation? It sounds stupid but the sentences seem very short - it’s very abrupt?

However, I found that I didn’t want to stop reading it, the story was just too mad, and whimsical! It’s an absolute farce!

It’s madness, one disaster to another. It’s utterly compelling reading...

My thanks to Netgalley and 4th Estate and William Collins for the advance copy!

This is an absolute wild ride of a book, and I'm not sure whether it's the good kind of a wild ride. It's insane and at times, you're confused as to how all of this comes together, or what's happening at all.

I heard a great deal about Jonas Jonasson, and I have two of the other books on my tbr, but this one just didn't have a great effect on me to be quite honest.

I think the fact that I couldn't stand Victor as a character. Tho, I really tried to, but I just had such a hard time enjoying reading this book because he was so outrageous and hateful.

I did love following Ole's story, which redeems this book for me.

The writing was terrific, I really can't complain. I even caught myself laughing at a few points, but mostly I was kind of anxious and angry.

Overall, I think a lot of people will find this book exhilarating, different and interesting, but I feel like me and this book didn't click. I will still check out other works from this author!

Considering this book is about the most armchair travel you could get in one book, it is probably perfect for a 2021 lovkdown read!

Spanning Sweden, London, France, Germany, New York, Istanbul, Nairobi, the Massai savanna and South Africa, you really feel whizzed around the world during this insane narrative.

The plot line and character interactions are, frankly, bonkers. It could only have come from the mind of Jonas Jonasson - as anyone who has read any of his other books will be able to appreciate. How this narrative is so wordy and yet so readable is a feat known only to the author and his (assumedly extremely patient) translator.

The last section of the novel, this one really did test my patience. For most of it, though, this was inventive, a bit batty and wonderfully escapist.

3.5.

Ole Mbatian a Maasai medicine man and his chief, Victor an odious so far right politically he should have been named Adolf, his ex-wife Jenny, his son Kevin and artist Irma Stern. How on earth do this disparate bunch connect??? This could only be created in the fertile mind of Jonas Jonasson! Who is out for sweet sweet revenge and why??!!

This is like the Swedish equivalent of a French farce. It’s a comedy of errors from start to finish. It’s utterly mad, bonkers and as such you just have to go with the flow as it’s not meant to be in touch with any reality on this earth. The characters are good and well depicted. Victor is totally vile having no redeeming features whatsoever and his views, it goes without saying and beyond awful. Ole Mbatian is the best character in the book, I absolutely love him! His journey from Kenya to Sweden and his arrival there are the best parts of the book in my opinion. He livens up every page he is on. The Irma Stern and art elements are really good and as we progress though the novel I really like the twists and turns in that part of the storyline. The writing is definitely clever, I don’t find much to laugh at but it does raise a smile or two! Pulling off a plot line like this one takes some sort a genius, albeit a mad one 😂!

However, I just can’t get past how horrible Victor is. He’s a nasty piece of work, his views are shocking, he’s a cynical, opportunistic, conniving excuse of a human being. There’s no joy when he appears on the page and hence my 3.5 rating.

Overall, this is very different, it’s creative, crazy but worth reading for the escapism. It’s also worth checking out Irma Stern’s paintings which are fantastic.

With thanks to NetGalley and 4th Estate, William Collins for the arc in return for an honest review.

Jonasson's novels never fail to bring a smile to my face. Sweet Sweet Revenge Ltd was just the joy I was expecting and a fun adventure with Jonasson's latest unlikely characters. Characters each of which have their own charm, feel so random yet well researched and innocently humourous.

On multiple occasions this novel had me laughing out loud. I really find Jonasson such a unique voice, really charming and just total light-hearted fun. Probably the only author I have read who can make terrible crime really be such a joy to read.

Jonasson is my total go to when I need something light and happy, it's a perfect bed time read.

Thanks to NetGalley, 4th Estate and William Collins and Jonas Jonasson for an eArc copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review!

Having read all of the authors previous works I was looking forward to reading this, expecting the usual charm and wit of the characters. But to be honest, I struggled to get in to the story with this one, and took a while for me to finish. The story seemed to flit a little bit too much, with some random exposition included as a chapter added here and there.
That is to say I did enjoy the book, but I have noticed the last couple of books haven't been to the standard he started off with "The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared" and I think that put a bit of a damper on reading this one.
If you are a fan of the author, I would recommend reading it for yourself as you will know what to expect and can make your own opinion. For new readers, you might have to stick with it to understand the way the author writes his novels, as they can be a bit confusing at times.
I was provided an ARC from NetGalley in return for my honest review.

Thanks Netgalley and the Publisher. This is a story about revenge and getting pay back for someone who has done you wrong. I really enjoyed it and liked all the characters. Would recommend.

I knew I wanted to read this after loving the 100 year old man and it did not disappoint.

This story is essentially about a couple getting revenge on a man who has wronged them with the help of a new company that specialises in getting revenge but what ensures is a comically timeline of errors, each one more bonkers than the next.

First of all you need to accept going into this that it is fiction and that 'coincidences' are going to happen left right and centre, its part of the charm of Jonasson's books. I thought the characters were a great blend and Ole really made me laugh of many occasions.

This book is perfect for a bit of fun and escapism and cements Jonas Jonasson on my autobuy author list.

Jonas Jonasson has a voice truly like no other.

Having fallen in love with 'The 100 year old man' books within pages, I was so excited to get my hands on another story.

Witty, bold and vibrant - Sweet, Sweet Revenge follows a group of mismatched souls on very different journeys about revenge and discovery. The utterly detestable Victor, his ex-wife Jenny and the son he abandoned, Kevin who is now out for some sweet, sweet revenge on his Father. Although one of the most completely enthralling characters we meet along the way is Kevins new adopted father Ole, one of a long line of Maasai medicine men. He was bright, vivid, and so very wonderful - definitely a pleasure to read. And the complete opposite of Victor - a man so horrid in his treatment of people and his beliefs that it almost made me physically uncomfortable to read his thoughts and times and had me tempted to throw the book into a fire so I wouldn't have to hear another word.

I laughed, I cringed, I gasped - this was such a mixed bag of absurdity and hilarity as our plotters are faced with unexpected hurdles and roadblocks on their journey to somewhere they couldn't ever see coming.

A journey about art, spanning many generations in Sweden and...wait for it...Kenia and Berlin and South Africa? To start with I was sceptical. It was not what I had expected. But I had read “The 100-year-old” and liked Jonasson’s style, the way he takes you by the hand and simply walks you through his bizarre (and highly improbable) stories. The clever change of tempo in Johansson’s story fascinated me: a generation of people can be told and filed away in a paragraph, a journey from Africa to Europe is relived in a couple of sentences, but then you also get the minutiae of the atmosphere of the savannah.
Needed to look up the many references to expressionist art - not a fan, but interesting to learn about it. You’ll also have to be prepared to be lead around on a lead, as in “oh, THAT’S where we’re going, is it?” So, I was quite prepared to follow any madcap shenanigans.
And just then it started sagging. And the author tried to throw everything and the kitchen sink into the story: a Maasai warrior and his adoptive son, a nasty art dealer, a reluctant retiring police inspector, Kenian village rivalry, a highly-prized expressionist painter, neighbour’s feuds, a shop selling revenge, goats, sex toys, wooden clubs and shopping malls, rightwingers, murder, forgery, golden potato peelers and escalators in the savannah. And it all got a bit much for me...

Having read 'The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared (5 stars) and Hitman Anders and the Meaning of It All (4 stars) I had high hopes for this one.

Sadly, this book did not engage me as much as the '100-Year-Old-Man'. There were some very funny parts and I did laugh out loud - a lot. But I did not find the majority of the characters engaging. In fact, after the first couple of chapters where we were introduced to Victor Alderheim and his ideologies, I was tempted to DNF it; I didn't want to spend my time reading about a character that had those specific beliefs. But maybe that was the author's intention, to make Victor so odious that we are wanting his young ex-wife, Jenny, and his abandoned son, Kevin, to get their revenge on him. The character that I did really like was Kevin's adopted father, Ole Mbatian, a Maasai medicine man. Ole's experiences in Sweden are some of the funniest I have read. He is wonderful. In fact, the whole middle section when our characters are planning their revenge on Victor, when they are taking steps to exact their revenge and the obstacles that they face are so hilarious that I couldn't put the book down.

Personally, I think that the book did not need its epilogue and I didn't think it added anything to the novel.

This is a very mixed review, and I have found it difficult to sum the book up. I didn't like the opening chapters although I loved the 'meat' of the story, it made me laugh. But when I discovered the character of Victor, it almost make me put it down. The author made me dislike Victor and everything he stood for with such intensity, so much so that I didn't enjoy reading about the character.

I wanted to love it in the same way that I had loved 'The 100-Year-Old-Man' and I'm sad that I didn't

Another wonderful book byJonas Jonasson a story that drew me right in.Characters that come alive a storyline that s unique entertaining. Kept me turning the pages.I enjoyed this tale from beginning to end.#netgalley #4thestate

Witty. Clever. Perfect.

Jonas Jonasson does it again with his unique writing style that manages to bring together the most unlikely of people into the most unlikely of situations to create the best and most plausible of stories! This book is just so good and the perfect antidote to the current World we’re living in.