This was a solid book but not one for me. I didn't enjoy the style of writing nor the protagonist and so I found it hard to connect to the book. For people who do connect to these things I think it will be a really enjoyable read.

I enjoyed Rebecca Makkai’s The Believers but I did not revere it in quite the same way as some others, so I think that helped my expectations not being too high for this.

That being said, this was a very readable engrossing book, if a bit frustrating. It blended together a lot of other books I have enjoyed but didn’t delve enough into the central premise of a student-teacher relationship as much as I was expecting it to and the narrative directed towards the teacher felt confusing.

Nevertheless I found this incredibly compelling if a little bit long.

4 stars

What a rollercoaster of a read! I found myself completely engrossed in the world of Granby School, Thalia Keith and Bodie Kane.

I love the way Makkai slowly unpicks the mystery, overturning little pieces of evidence and re-examining testimony. It's a story about changing perspectives and perceptions, with a detective protagonist who is not afraid to admit her flaws. It is a little overlong, and sometimes Makkai's exploration of Twitter cancel culture and MeToo feels a bit overworked, but there are also some astute reflections on guilt, agency and justice along the way. With slightly more stringent editing, it could have been perfect.

I Have Some Questions For You is a compelling slowburn mystery.

The premise of this appealed to me, largely as I have read a Makkai novel before and really enjoyed it. Here, the protagonist Bodie Kane finds herself invited back to her elite New Hampshire boarding school, Granby, to deliver a short course on podcasts. She lives in LA, with her husband, who forms part of the subplot, and her children. Her return to Granby is an opportunity to stay with old friends and spend time at her old school.

The key event in this book is the murder of Thalia - from years before, when Bodie was a student. One of the members of staff, Omar, is serving a sentence in prison for her murder - but Bodie, along with her podcast students, seek to find out the truth, and prove that Omar is not guilty. The Covid-19 pandemic forms part of the backdrop of the story, and it raises questions about race - for example, is Omar serving time because he is guilty, or because of his skin colour?

Even though Bodie tells the story, she is addressing one of her old teachers, Mr Bloch, and this is a device I am not too sure about. Seemingly, he is the suspect - and all of the evidence Bodie uncovers suggests he got away with the murder of Thalia due to his background (white, successful, middle class). This is not necessarily the case, though, as time tells when one reads on.

For me, this character-centred novel is too long. Yes, it is well-written, but I think Makkai could have made the story more compelling by being more rigorous with her prose.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC of this book.

My reading year started with a bang!

Bodie Kane doesn’t like to dwell on her time spent at Granby – a prestigious boarding school in New Hampshire. How, from the ages of 14-18, she was the outcast, the misfit, the poor kid from Indiana, bullied mercilessly by rich, entitled misogynous boys, and mean girls. Then, to top it all off, the murder of popular student, Thalia Keith, the spring of Bodie’s senior year. Soon after, the 23 year-old athletics coach was arrested and charged, sent to prison for the remainder of this life.

Case closed, or was it?

Now, it’s 23 years later, and Bodie is returning to Granby for two-weeks to teach a couple of classes. When one of her students chooses the subject of Thalia Keith for her podcast assignment, Bodie is at first uneasy, but soon finds herself unwittingly assisting, as memories that she has successfully spent years blocking out slowly begin to re-surface, causing her to realise just how wrongly she interpreted so many things that happened back then – including Thalia Keith’s murder.

You all know how much I adore a mystery set in a boarding high school environment – not to mention it was a cold solved one. 90’s nostalgic, yeah! And, I was so there for those gothic vibes, as naturally Granby had it’s share of old buildings and secret nooks and crannies, a tragic history, and, of course, it was situated in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by woods. Plus, the snowy weather contributed to the cut-off-from-the-world mood. But, it was just as contemporary and modern as it was gothic. So, crime/mystery/gothic/academia/coming-of-age/teen angst, and drama, including courtroom drama, even though there were no scenes in an actual courtroom. Huh? you ask, and to that I answer – read it, and find out.

I thought Rebecca Makkai did a phenomenal job of showing that when you’re in so much pain yourself (especially as an adolescent), you feel utterly alone, so alone that you fail to notice that those around you are in just as much pain. Bodie was a fascinating character – strong and resilient, yet vulnerable and flawed, scarred by tragedy and neglect.

You might be questioning that if I loved this so much, why it took me six days to read? Well, for one, the book length was 448 pages. Two, the novel was light on dialogue compared to what I normally read, and I tend to find that books with less dialogue take me longer to both read and absorb. It also should be noted that I prefer reads that are dialogue-heavy, a further testament to how amazing I Have Some Questions For You was. My third reason, the beautiful, lyrical, descriptive, detailed prose had me frequently stopping to marvel over how amazing it was. I read an e-Arc, but I definitely plan on acquiring the audiobook when it’s released, so I can relive the exceptional writing.

The narration was a bit different, in that the protagonist, Bodie, was speaking directly to Granby’s former music teacher, Denny Bloch, (a teacher that mentored her when she was a student there) regarding the events that unfolded during the course of the novel. And, as the title states, she has some questions for him. I debated over whether to include this information, wondered if it was too much of a spoiler, but ultimately I concluded it was something that I would’ve preferred to know going in, rather than spending the first 30 or so pages being confused as hell over who this Mr. Bloch was.

Not only was that initially confusing, but I feel I should also mention the ever-changing timeline, as that was another thing that stumped me at the beginning, as you had a forty-four-year-old Bodie in the present, 2022, but then the next minute you’re in 2016, and then 2018, where the bulk of the novel took place. Additionally, there are multiple flashbacks to Bodie’s four school years at Granby (1991-1995), and a few from her childhood. And, these flashbacks and flashforwards switched at the drop-of-a-hat, with some marked by paragraph or chapter breaks, but a lot were inserted in the middle of a scene, a scene that triggered something from Bodie’s past, and then she’d drift off, relaying that memory, usually for several pages before returning to the present. Once I got into the groove though, I loved it.

Now for those trigger warnings. Without going into too much detail, pretty much every social issue a teenager could potentially face – everything from inappropriate sexual comments and behaviour through to physical and sexual violence, suicide and murder, and more... Also, a further warning for racial discrimination and bias. I definitely experienced some emotional moments while reading. I haven’t marked it as YA, because it wasn’t, but given how much of the storyline involved adolescent culture, and given there wasn’t anything too graphic, I would deem this one as suitable for older teens 16 plus.

One last thing – there were a lot of characters, and I mean a lot. I’m actually a fan of a zillion characters as to me it’s more realistic, as no man is an island, people are surrounded by people, and given that the majority of this took place in a boarding school setting, it made perfect sense considering all the students, teachers, and faculty.

In conclusion, my first book for 2023 was a smash hit, which I’ve added to my favourite list. I will definitely be reading more by Rebecca Makkai very soon. Wow!

I’d like to thank Netgalley UK, Little Brown Book Club UK, and Rebecca Makkai for the e-ARC.

Mark your calendars for the 23rd February, 2023. You won’t be sorry you did.

This twisty novel will keep you guessing the entire time! I Have Some Questions is by Rebecca Makkai, author of the awesome novel, The Great Believers. In her newest work we have podcasting, tones of dark academia and a thrilling murder mystery.

Bodie Kane returns to her alma mater private boarding school to teach during their Jan term. She is an all together adult and successful professional now, and she is proud to return to a place that she struggled to fit in. Almost as soon as she returns she is faced with the murder mystery of her roommate from school. Although Omar Evans was arrested, he has always declared his innocence and the conviction evidence was light, at best.

When Bodie's students become invested in a podcast about the murder, she is quickly pulled into a situation that spins out of control. The start of this book is a bit slow, but the second half is awesome. I would recommend to all who love true crime, podcasts, dark academia and underdogs.
#littleBrownandGroup #IHaveSomeQuestionsForYou #RebeccaMakkai

This was my first book by Rebecca Makkai but it won't be my last. It's a layered book, with many topics touched on, from true crime, power dynamics, MeToo, institutional collusion and more. I think it did a good job of exploring all of these to a certain degree, but perhaps was doing too much to really do a deep dive on any one particular topic. However, I enjoyed the discussions it did bring up and made you think about, though I don't think they were anything new for readers who have read about these topics a lot.

This one is a literary mystery story (or mysterary fiction, as I like to to call it) so it's not going to deliver on those shock twist and turns one might expect from a thriller. That being said, the story went in a lot of directions that by the end, there was a small twist I didn't see coming because I wasn't aware I was meant to be on the lookout for one! I love when a book can surprise you like that.

As with a few other readers, I did feel this one was a little longer than it needed to be. I think it could have easily been a 350 page book and still had the same impact. I was worried around the 50% mark that it was going to be a 3-star read due to the slow pace of the plot but the last third more than made up for that small dip in excitement.

Ad-PR Netgalley & Little Brown Book Group.

Wrapped up in a murder mystery at a prestigious New England boarding school, Makkai's new novel revolves around the topic of femicide while at the same time questioning standards of wokeness and tackling cancel culture - and I really enjoyed how she plays with classic genre writing (think The Secret History) and current phenomena to ponder social justice. Our protagonist is 40-ish podcaster Bodie Kane, who lives next door to her husband: The couple has separated, but they are still good friends with occasional benefits and raise two young children together (how zeitgeisty do you want your main character to be? YES.). When Bodie takes up a temporary teaching job at Granby, the elite boarding school in New Hamsphire she herself attended, she once again gets wrapped up in the murder case concerning her late roommate, beautiful (and white, and rich) Thalia Keith.

When Bodie and the students who attend her class dive into the investigation of Thalia's murder in order to produce a podcast on the matter, they become more and more convinced that the man who has already spent over 20 years in prison for the deed is innocent - the Black athletics coach was simply the one who best fit the desired narrative. It becomes clear that the person who is repeatedly directly addressed in the novel - the whole text reads like a long letter to him - is a prime suspect who has never been investigated: The music teacher. What did the students back then know, and why didn't they speak up, helping the man who went to jail and pointing out the factors that seemed dubious? What role did the social climate play, what responsibility do they carry individually?

Questions of changing awareness, but also agency and responsibility are underlined by the second plotline that alternates with the first one: Bodie's husband Jerome, an artist, gets canceled on twitter because years ago, when he was in his thirties, he had a consensual relationship with a 21-year-old employee of the gallery he was working with, which also leads to Bodie being attacked online. Will Bodie and Jerome lose everything over a legal relationship that went sour a long time ago?

When the apparently contrasting plotlines start to merge, the story becomes a real pageturner: Suddenly, Bodie and her investigative team have the possibility to use the online community that chased Jerome to chase the man they deem guilty...

Makkai uses her story to ponder framing, narratives, and preconceptions - what better place to illuminate the repercussions of how stories are crafted than in literary fiction? Young Bodie was an outsider at Granby who has lived through trauma and didn't have the status and habitus of the other students - Makkai shows the social dynamics at play, between classes and genders. The same goes for the discussion about Jerome, the husband - here, Makkai asks uncomfortable questions about the instrumentalization of victim narratives in order to gain status and attention. The whole thing is intercut with scenes from the film class Bodie also teaches at Granby, where students learn how to see and interpret images while considering the power of montage (I also had to watch all the films mentioned in college and got flashbacks! :-)). Talking about monatge, Makkai has also inserted several references to real-life femicides, raising awareness on how they are perceived and what that means.

So sure, Makkai has once more written a novel that is unreasonably long for what it has to say, but she has also once more written a text that tackles highly relevant topics in a clever way, challenging our preconceptions and underlining the complexity of the real world - plus it's super entertaining. The protagonist, Bodie, is an imperfect, messy, complicated woman, and that's the kind of female character I want to meet on the page (please note how she is not at all defined by her role as a mother). This book will be quite the challenge for people longing for literature that tells them what to think, and what's not to love about that? Certainly, the title "I Have Some Questions For You" does refer to the suspect who is directly addressed in the text, but it is also printed on the cover which is directed towards: The readers.

If this becomes a bestseller and wins some prizes, I'm all here for it.

Liked the premise of this - was the wrong person convicted. Requested an ARC as this book was on many most highly anticipated books for 2023. I do like a list.

This book was not for me and I DNF’d around page 100. I wasn’t engaged and did not enjoy the writing style.

Thanks to Netgallery for the ARC.

It was a bit slow but it picked up the pace towards the end yet still there was no major twist.There are lots of sensitive topics featured throughout this book that i think the author presents her views wonderfully on.

Bodie Kane is a podcaster and film professor who returns 20 plus years later to her New Hampshire boarding school to teach two short classes during holiday break. In the podcasting class, the focus turns to a murder that occurred at the school while Bodie was a senior. Bodie’s junior year roommate Thalia Keith, one of the “it girls” in the popular clique that didn’t include Bodie, was murdered and the blame was quickly fastened on a black athletic trainer Omar. Years later, Bodie has questions about his guilt. There is a lot going on in her personal life as well. Her estranged husband is swept in the #MeToo fervor and accused of predatory behaviour by a much-younger former girlfriend. While the novel would seem like a straightforward mystery investigating the murder of Thalia, there are so many weighty topics addressed in the novel, but somehow the author manages to weave them in without being overly preachy or awkward about it. The novel really focuses on violence and predatory behavior toward women, racism in the criminal justice system, elitism and privilege. This magnficently-written novel is not just an interesting story, it has a lot of thought-provoking things to say.

I received an ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to NetGalley, Little, Brown Book Group UK, and the author Rebecca Makkai.
I was really thrilled to receive an ARC of 'I Have Some Questions For You' as I loved Makkai's previous novel 'The Great Believers'. I had very high expectations.
I enjoyed the book and the story and characters were engaging but it was quite slow-going, and it took me a long time to get through. I wasn't excited to pick it up and get stuck in (apart from right at the end when things escalated). 3 stars.

The main character of this novel is Bodie Kane, a successful podcaster and film studies academic. She has gone back in her 40s to the boarding school she attended to teach some summer courses. This leads to her involvement in the investigation of a murder that happened when she was at school. The narrative raises issues around race, class and predatory male behaviour. It should have been something that appealed to me but I could not empathise with any of the characters and found the writing style somewhat plodding.

This book is having an identity crisis. Is it a thriller? Is it an American gothic boarding school tale? Is it a court room drama? Is it a true crime investigation? Having read it I am none the wiser - although it is so long it could be all four and still have room for some other genres.

I kept waiting for the big reveal. Had the narrator been abused by the teacher she suspects of the murder? Had she had a thing with the convicted murderer? Why was she spending so much time and effort on this case to the detriment of her family and children? Not to give away too much - but I have no idea. I dod finish oit because I thought there was going to be a big twist. There isn't.

Rebecca Makkai couldn’t write a bad book even if her life depended on it! I have some questions for you is totally of the zeitgeist covering as it does the beginning of the #Metoo movement and the popularity of the Serial Podcast and coming up to the present with Adnan Syed’s release from prison after DNA exoneration having spent 23 years for the murder of his high school girlfriend Hae Min Lee.
In ‘I have some questions for you’ we meet Bodie in 2018. Bodie is a successful podcaster who has left her home in LA to return to the small New England boarding school she attended for high school in the 90’s in order to teach some classes during holiday break. The novel centres around the murder of Bodie’s one time roommate Thalia who was found in the school’s swimming pool presumed drowned and how looking back at the situation with the benefit of hindsight that the presumed guilt of PE assistant Omar doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Just to draw in even more real life parallels Omar maintains he was manipulated by police into a false confession much like what many people believe happened to Brendan Dassey the slightly slow and naïve teenager who confessed to murder in a crime covered by the documentary series Making a Murderer.
If people say life imitates art then I love it when art imitates life and novels deal with issues that are so immediate and instantly relatable. The story is told from the point of view of 2018 when Bodie is teaching a podcasting course at Granby and two of her students decide to make their project the murder of Thalia Keith when they learn that Bodie knew her and in the second part it is 2022 and Bodie is again back in New Hampshire this time to testify at a hearing Omar’s legal team have arranged to try and get his conviction overturned.
We also visit Bodie’s earlier childhood, her time at Granby and 2016 when she is sent a link to a YouTube video of the school play performed the night that Thalia was murdered.
I love novels that shift from one time frame to another and I think Makkai has got it spot on here. It is easy to know where you are in the timeline as the time periods are distinct and the cast of characters is small and tight with mostly the same people appearing in each time. I especially enjoyed Bodie’s back story and the exploits of her time in High School especially as we appear to be the same age! Other sub players include a true crime fanatic YouTuber who is convinced that Thalia was in fact murdered by her then boyfriend and Bodie’s own ex husband Jerome who finds himself ‘cancelled’ on Twitter when a woman he had an adult but large age gap relationship with prior to meeting Bodie. Both are again very topical and beautifully true to life.
As she is narrating Bodie is aiming her titular questions to a teacher called Mr Bloch who was a music teacher and one who had a relaxed and friendly rapport with his students. Teenage Bodie liked Mr Bloch but found his relationship with Thalia slightly ‘off’ and now as a grown woman she strongly suspects that he is somehow involved with Thalia’s murder and that he was grooming girls in the school.
Makkai moves the story to its inevitable conclusion, someone in the novel will reveal who the killer is while others find their suspicions aren’t correct. The pace is steady with plenty of time for the reader to build their own theory and to find all the breadcrumbs that the author has left for us to follow until in the final 10% the story kicks into high gear and it becomes a frantic page turner.
The truth when it is revealed is, as it is in real life not an exciting moment of truth accepted by the whole world and all is right with the world. It is messier, more emotionally confusing and in its way a little soul destroying.
There is so much to think about in this novel. How adult we really are as teenagers and how dangerous that feeling of being grown can actually be. The way that young men behave and how that has been enabled by both men and women in their lives. How easy it is to prey on young women and terrifyingly how common it is. How just is the criminal justice system and how much of a role in pursuing that justice should internet, television and podcast media really have?
I loved it and will genuinely miss Bodie now I’m no longer spending time with her.

I had really high hopes for this book when I read the blurb but , sadly it fails to deliver on what it promised.

Bodie Kane, podcaster, is asked back to her boarding school to teach a short two week course on film studies and podcasting. Bodie is reluctant to go back as she doesn't want to stir the memories of an event that happened there over twenty years previously. When Bodie was a student, her former roommate, Thalia Keith, was found dead in the school swimming pool. The resultant investigation found she had been murdered, and the sports therapist, Omar, was arrested and charged with her murder. During her return to campus, Bodie starts to question her memories of that fateful night, the police's inept investigation and the timeline of events. She even starts to wonder if Omar really was guilty or if the Omar was 'sacrificed' to protect someone else.... Bodie's podcast students decide to investigate the murder and this triggers a sequence of events that lead everyone back to court.

This is an incredibly slow moving book. We revisit various events at school with Bodie and the events of the murder as she thinks through and rejects a range of possible suspects. Written as if the reader is one of the suspects that Bodie is addressing it is a long time before we learn this person's name. The list of suspects seems like it is there as a vehicle to move the story along to the inevitable suspect as most of the people Bodie suspects are incredibly unlikely - as is the scenarios she images each of them going through.

The 'reveal' feels a bit Scooby Doo as it's the podcast kids who find the vital evidence - 20 odd years after the event - it certainly stretched my belief to damn near snapping point. The story feels overlong for the content really, and I felt that some sections were just filler to pad out the story to fit the length. I found the ending unsatisfactory too - though I am aware that things like this happen in life too.

Some will love this, some will hate it....I was just left feeling indifferent really.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

A really interesting novel and mystery. There have been a number of recent novels in relation to people being podcasters looking into 'cold' cases but this was something different. Well written and very enjoyable

I Have Some Questions For You is a novel about a woman trying to uncover the truth about what happened at her boarding school over twenty years ago. When Bodie Kane was at The Granby School, a New Hampshire boarding school she felt out of place at, her former roommate Thalia was found dead in the pool, and the athletics coach Omar was sent to prison for her murder. When Bodie returns as an adult to teach a two week course on podcasting and film, she assists her students in looking into Thalia's case, wondering what the police missed and if Omar was wrongly convicted. Was there even something Bodie could've known back then that would've helped?

The novel is told from Bodie's perspective, with her addressing someone (it slowly becomes apparent who) as she goes through both the present and the past, drawn into the mystery of what really happened. At the same time, her estranged husband is cancelled on the internet, threatening Bodie's own podcast about the injustices done to Hollywood starlets, so the book also considers who is believed (the initial 'present day' narrative is at the height of the Me Too movement) and some of the impact of looking for justice.

The mystery narrative element, whilst tense, is drawn out into a much longer story by the bigger questions (title pun unintended) the book hints towards, particularly around flaws of the justice system, but by the end, these questions don't feel fully explored. Bodie's own motivations for trying to uncover the mystery are queried by characters, but the book doesn't really address some of her thoughts and mindset, especially around who she has believed or hasn't, and why she disliked other people from the school. Her position as an outsider gives her a different look at the case, but also seems to suggest that her own unresolved issues may have played into it, which is an interesting way to consider why people engage with true crime even when they did have some involvement originally.

Maybe because there have been quite a few novels covering campus mysteries, Me Too, and questions of who gets to tell what story, I Have Some Questions For You is a decent book and I liked the narrative, but didn't feel like it is doing anything particularly fresh to me, never quite digging into the hardest questions of if true crime benefits real life and how events and stories can be complicated and messy. Bodie's narration is shown at times to be holding things back or not aware of things, and she talks about others manipulating people and lying, and some of these elements I found more interesting than the subplot that is another story about a woman dealing with her husband being cancelled online.

Rebecca Makkai has been one of my favorite writers since her last novel, THE GREAT BELIEVERS, and this follow up did not disappoint. In the interest of full disclosure, boarding school and podcasting are two topics that are always going to pique my interest, so I was extra excited for this one. Makkai is a gorgeous writer, and despite the length of this book I read it all in nearly two days. Bodie is a fascinatingly flawed and compelling character, and I loved being inside her head. I will say that I was not an enormous fan of the decision to address some parts of the book to this teacher from the past - it felt heavy-handed and unnecessary, but ultimately it did not take away from my great enjoyment of the book.

A fantastic slow burn mystery. I couldn't put it down and highly recommend it. I was hooked from the very first page as it was atmospheric. Everything about this ticked all my boxes. I especially enjoy mysteries were cold cases are involved.