Clearing the Netgalley backlog continues and this time with what I thought was going to be a thriller but ended up being way more comedic.

We’re met with a cast of flawed and messy characters stuck in jobs they don’t like, partners who don’t treat them right, and family members who don’t understand them. The chaos of their day to day lives eventually builds to a murder with comedic interjections by the ‘narrator’.

I did find that the pacing of the book was a bit slow in the middle and then the book seemed to abruptly meet the peak. That being said it was a fun story, with quirky characters, and a lovely escape from the day to day.

As the authors second book you can definitely see their style and it will be great to see what comes next!

This book was enjoyable. It also covers some serious themes.
The characters are all struggling with life. The writing style works so well

This was a very unique read! It is an epistolary novel that focuses on emails and WhatsApp between multiple characters and across two countries. At the focus of the novel are three individuals who work together and on the periphery are other friends/people they meet along our story. While the title may lead one to believe this is a mystery/thriller, it is more of a literary fiction piece and character story. The end of the novel felt abrupt and left me with some questions, but also left me wanting to know more about the future of the characters. I also enjoyed that within the interchanges we delve into the themes of disability, mental health, sexuality, and our desire to be accepted by others.

i've always liked mixed media/medium books that utilize different forms of text, and i think the best ones work with different formats to progress the story. i didn't think there was a whole lot of story here though. it's much more literary than mysterious or suspenseful. mismanagement of expectations i suppose

Maybe I mistakenly assumed that this would be a thriller given the title and synopsis however this did not detract from the great writing instead of cast of characters. I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

8/10
Countdown to a Killing by Tom Vaughan MacAulay is a story that was really fun to read, even though it reminded me more of a literary piece of fiction than a thriller. Still, the mystery was great and the whole vibe of the book is reminiscent of classic hitchcock in some way.

Absolutely LOVED this. I have a dark sense of humour and this book was just absolutely made for me. Genuinely laugh out loud in places and moving in others. Tom Vaughan MacAulay does a fantastic job weaving a tale from source material that you don't typically find in books. Interesting and fun and so well written. Bravo!

A unique premise that ends up leaning more litfic than mystery/thriller. A recommended purchase for collections where those genres are popular.

The premise of this mystery-thriller is intriguing, but the execution is somewhat superficial and does not provide a thrilling build up in the story.

The characters are interesting, but as the story progresses and the excessive details added in this section feel redundant and don't really add up to the plot, it becomes inconsistent in the overall.

I'd also like to mention how anticlimactic it felt overall; as someone who's read a few mystery-thriller books, this one didn't feel like one.

I'll admit that I had expected more of a mystery or crime-thriller, based upon the title and blurb of Countdown To A Killing. It could perhaps be better described as literary / contemporary fiction, a building crescendo to a future crime that doesn't actually feature in the plot, beyond a brief explanatory epilogue. That said, Tom Vaughan MacAulay has produced an engrossing and amusing character-based tragi-comedy in 21st century epistolary novel format.

Via several intertwined series of email correspondence and WhatsApp messages, we come to know London-based scrivener-notaries Lomax Clipper and Wen Li, their boss Julian Pickering, and – later – Lomax’s Sicilian friend Fifi de Angelis.

While the majority of the action in the first half takes place in London, four of our protagonists ultimately converge on the Via Lungarini in Palermo on the night of 1-2 September. We know, thanks to several “editorial interventions” with which the epistolary narrative is punctuated, that someone will die and someone will kill, and that one, but not necessarily both, roles will be filled by the central characters. Who and why remains a mystery. The narrative turns up fraught relationships and potential motives aplenty, but ultimately the much-anticipated final denouement comes as a rather jarring, though not unsatisfying, close.

Tom Vaughan MacAulay successfully renders the well-established epistolary format for a 21st century audience - traditional letters are replaced with emails and WhatsApp messages, with the inevitable mishaps such as mistakenly copying in, tagging or forwarding to the wrong recipient. As we only see one side of each series of correspondence, it's left mostly to the reader to interpolate the content of the other side of the exchange. This enables MacAulay to skilfully convey the protagonists' biases, insecurities and flaws without having to lay them out in black and white. We can draw parallels with our own work and social lives, family and romantic relationships, internal dialogues, and with those who we encounter along the way. It's an immersive and engrossing reading experience.

I found Countdown To A Killing a rewarding and stimulating read, with fascinating, albeit not always particularly likeable, characters, an evocative setting and a cleverly-structured plot. I also enjoyed the sample of author Tom Vaughan MacAulay's previous novel, Being Simon Haines, that was included at the conclusion of my Kindle ARC.

My thanks to the author, Tom Vaughan MacAulay, publisher RedDoor Press, and NetGalley (UK) for the opportunity to read and review this title.

I really tried to like this book but I was confused by the characters initially- making it tough for me to follow through. I am so intrigued by the book’s description though so I might attempt this one in the fall

So good! I’m glad I was able to snag an advanced copy of this book as it’s one I couldn’t put down from start to finish. I would highly recommend it as a summer read and it will leave you guessing until the very end!

Fun read with hints of "Rear Window" vibes; great for anyone who loved Only Murders in the Building.

Lomax is working on a novel while carrying out a disastrous long-distance relationship with Aurora. Wen, Lomax's work colleague, has severe OCD and can sometimes barely leave her house. Their stories eventually all wind up together with someone being killed. This story is told via emails, messages, etc., between Lomax, Wen, their boss Julian, and friend Lomax makes in Sicily upon his return, which I don't usually like, but it mostly worked in this case. I liked that all of the bits of correspondence you get in the book are one-sided, not revealing the responses they get except in the sender's further reactions. I also enjoyed the editorial interjections reminding the reader that there will in fact be a murder later on in the book. The ending was rather abrupt in that the killing felt almost like an afterthought, but then I guess that's how a countdown works. Overall, a strange book in a lot of ways, but I enjoyed the story a lot. 4 stars.

The book actually has a very interesting premise especially the way it is written. The author used social correspondence such as emails and WhatsApp as a tool of communication between his characters which in turn tells us the story.

In this story, we have a few eccentric characters and we are told from the get go that one of them will be murdered at some point in the future. We have Wen, a young British-Chinese woman who is not afraid of showing off her roots, Lomax who is Wen’s co-worker and also aspiring writer, Julian who is their hateful boss at work and Fifi, Lomax’s new found friend. Their correspondence navigates around their lives, their ups and downs as they grew closer and what led one of them to be murdered eventually.

There is alot going on because of how different each of the characters are but I quite enjoyed it! However, I do find some parts of the correspondence to be quite dry because some of the messages are written to characters we never hear a reply from. But I could understand this could be a tactic for the author to portray the impending murder.

The plot definitely has potential and the characters are interesting enough but unfortunately, they didn’t work for me. Despite being forewarned time and time again what is bound to happen, the just dragged and dragged. It’s enough that the plot is draggy but when we finally reached the end, the murder happened in three pages??? With not much of a context and the whole story just abruptly ends there. I was hoping that everything would wrap the plot nicely but I was served with a big slap of disappointment.

Unfortunately, this story isn’t for me but it could be for you. If anyone else has read this or is going to, I would love to hear your thoughts. Thank you Netgalley and RedDoor Press for the arc.

DNF - I didn't enjoy the format in which the book was written & therefore found it difficult to keep track of everyone & everything. The format had me struggling to connect to the story.

So, when I started reading this, I almost put it down. I found the introduction of the characters in this format really confusing at first. The story is told in a series of email and WhatsApp messages and it took me a while to get used to it for sure.

However, once I got into the story and was able to work out the characters, I was really invested and struggled to put it down!

I found I really enjoyed the alternative format and way this story is told through correspondence. I also liked the characters and thought that the author wrote them well, giving them all separate personalities and a chance for the reader to connect with them, meaning we cared about what happens. The tension builds after a slow start, which kept me intrigued and reading to the end, which didn't disappoint, even though it comes quite suddenly,.

A different style of book for me but one I really enjoyed and would recommend!

This book was a bit confusing and took me a while to get really invested in the story but in the end I think enjoyed this, and I'm quoting, "contemporary take on an epistolary novel". Obviously a story told through emails, Whatsapp messages and letters will lack at some point the in-depth exploration of a story written in prose but still this was an interesting, lighthearted and fun book. There were a few moments that I didn't like as much but overall I enjoyed the story and (most of) the characters.

This book is told in a series of correspondence to various different people. I found it confusing and difficult to keep track on who was who and who they were talking to and what was going on. Therefore it wasn’t one of my favourites and I struggled through it.
Thank you to netgalley for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for my honest review.

This is really cleverly presented and the author does a great job in bringing characters to life in such a non traditional format. I loved the different characters and how their perspectives were brought to bear through the various media and felt this actually added to how vividly they were developed.