Thank you NetGalley for approving me to read this. A very good read that had me hooked, once started I couldn’t put it down. Highly recommend

On paper this was a great book, a good premise (I love a murder mystery), it was well written with well developed characters but it was just missing that extra spark for me & I found the author switching out to the history of the crime genre & murder mystery writing irritating.

The synopsis for this book filled me with so much hope and I was truly looking forward to reading it. However within the first handful of pages I had a horrible feeling that it wasn't going to be for me and unfortunately I was correct.

The book is a strange mixture of first, second and third perspective and an even stranger mix of murder mystery story and what felt like a text book on the history of murder mystery writing. The found the constant switch between the two very jarring and made me lose engagement.

I wish that the characters had made up for what I felt like I was lacking in plot and atmosphere, but they didn't do much to please me either. I didn't feel any connection to any of them and not only did I not particularly care about the victims, but I wasn't really bothered about who the murderer was either.

If you've read this far, it's no secret that this book was just not it for me. I feel like the author had what could have been a cool idea, but tried too hard to make it clever and therefore sucked all of the joy out of reading it. Not every book can be for everyone, but a book can be something to someone and I hope that someone out there has enjoyed reading this.

West Heart Kill focusses around an elite country club and a Bicentennial weekend in which multiple murders take place. Adam McAnnis has been hired by a member of the club for reasons which aren't revealed to us but he soon ends up investigating more than he has bargained for. This book is a murder mystery but also explores the genre as a whole.

The premise of this book was really intriguing and after reading so many murder mysteries I was excited for something a bit different. It is very clear that Dann McDorman is a talented author and I found that the pacing of this book was spot on. Some of the asides about the crime genre as a whole were interesting and I enjoyed the discussions around different tropes and how the genre came to be as it is today.

However, I felt that this book spent too long trying to be edgy and different and the actual murder mystery element was very weak. We aren't really introduced to the characters so I did find myself having to really think about who was who and for this reason I wasn't very invested in the plot. Some of the structural choices in this book felt unnecessary and really detracted from the story for example the play at the end and some of the informational asides throughout.

Overall I thought the premise of this was interesting however I wish the execution had been done differently. If you are a big fan of crime as a genre but are looking for something different this book might work for you.

I was unsure about this book, I liked it but some things were niggling at me that I didnt like. I love a good murder mystery but the ending was quite expected.

Thanks to Bloomsbury UK and NetGalley for ARC which I didn't manage to read until months after publication date.

Where to begin? The setting is an unspecified country club/hunting club in New England or thereabouts, in the seventies or so. The outsider (a private investigator) is invited by an old college friend to visit the family for the traditional Fourth of July celebrations. Turns out, the assembled families and hangers on all have reasons to be curious and possibly resentful of the newcomer, and the newcomer shows a little too much curiosity about some of the old traditions. Of course, an unexpected death follows - and then another.
So far, so standard. However, this novel is dizzying, technically dazzling, and as other reviewers have said, can be bewildering, frustrating and a wee bit overawed with its own cleverness. Multiple narrative shifts and points of view, unreliable narrators aplenty, and the knowing tips to the reader that they are reading a crime novel (but is it this kind or that one?) keep the reader guessing, or maybe putting the book down with a groan of frustration as there is another convolution.
I couldn't decide if I hated the arch knowing tone, and I got frustrated with the perspective shifts often. But boy, did I admire the heck out of it. One for those who don't mind being toyed with.

There was much to admire in this novel but I found it didn’t grip me quite as much as I had hoped. The writing was enjoyable and the characters well put together but it still struggled to build momentum.

By turns unique, intriguing, mystifying and frustrating

Well this book is certainly different to anything else I’ve ever read. The viewpoint chops and changes between the mechanics of mystery writing, the story and characters themselves, being presented as a play and the mysterious Reader.

My view of the book changed with every twist in the story and its telling. Initially I found the switching annoying and felt it made it hard to get into the book. As I read on the switching became part of the story telling and added to mystery and unease. There are several plots at play and clues are dropped like a paper trail for you to collect and piece together as you read.

The ending was unexpected and left me to come to my own conclusions and feeling somewhere between intrigued and left hanging. I might even re-read it at some point to see if I can work things out.

The book might make a good one for students or a bookclub but I suspect that it will be one of those books that people will either love or hate. Worth a read just to experience the unusual approach.

I was given this book from the author via netgalley only for the pleasure of reading and leaving an honest review should I choose to.

Clever, clever mystery story... sure it's a new way to intrigue us , drawing us in by exploring the very tropes of mystery writing ..but all the trappings, and querying of the form got in the way for me .. I see that others feel differently but I read too many crime stories/novels to be intrigued by an exploration of how crime stories are told .. that knowing smart guy voice narrating things just irked me.

As a fan of murder mysteries I was intrigued and looking forward to reading this book. I had read that it was something 'a bit different' so I started it hoping to it would be good. It was, to a certain level, I found the pace good and I picked it up to read as often as I could, however I found the ending rather flat and I didn't feel we were ever told enough about the characters to get really invested in them. As I said however I did think the writing was good as it kept me engaged even if at time the characters and plot did not.

Though the setting was well-written and enjoyable, I found myself thinking this book was trying too hard. I wasn't invested in the mystery and the commentary was irritating at worst.

As a big fan of a “whodunit”, I was intrigued to find a book that claimed to be a fresh new spin on the genre. However, this is perhaps the very embodiment of the adage that “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”.

This is sort of written in the second person, but describing what “you as the reader” are learning and noticing about the cast of characters involved in this locked-room style murder as you read the book, thereby also kind-of breaking the fourth wall. Interspersed throughout the tale of murder and intrigue at this hunting lodge / lake resort in the 1970s are frequent diversions by the author to relays nuggets about how other authors have tackled writing detective fiction in the past. These, to me, were the most interesting part of the book, which doesn’t speak wonders for the plot, but also served to make the narrative feel disjointed.

I didn’t really get to know much about the characters so ultimately didn’t really care what happened to them or why. I found some of the twists and turns rather infuriating, so don’t see this as a book that would necessarily appeal to fans of the “golden age” of mystery writing. While I can see that the quirky and novel style of writing would appeal to some, it wasn’t one that I particularly enjoyed.

My thanks to the author, NetGalley, and the publisher for the arc to review.

Content Warnings: Animal Death, Murder, Drug use/Abuse, Domestic Abuse, Suicide, Ableism, Anti-Semetism, Violence, Mild Gore, Child Death, Grief, Alcohol Abuse, Death of a Loved One

Thank you Netgalley for an eARC in exchange for an honest review!

Representations: https://trello.com/c/riOkOBY6/91-west-heart-kill-by-dann-mcdorman

I honestly don't even know where to begin with this review. This book was absolutely batshit insane and was one of the most unique books I've ever read. Trying to explain it would 1) be impossible and 2) make it seem worse than it is. On paper, if you list out everything this book does it sounds like a complete mess. In execution however, somehow it works. I have no idea how it works but in my opinion it does.

Don't go into this book blind - this doesn't mean spoil yourself on twists and the puzzles and such - know how esoteric it gets with the multiple different writing styles and make sure you have pencils/pens, paper and sticky notes to mark pages at the ready! You, as the reader, are very much a part of the story as much as any of the other characters. The narrator - essentially the voice of the author - switches between fiction and non-fiction (The interjections of the history of murder mysteries and such where quite interesting) and the book overall uses countless different writing styles. First person, third person, second person - even plural third person(?? the only way I can describe that lol) - and more.

The characters - some you'll love, some you'll hate. A fair few you'll really hate. But that's also part of the point, many of these characters weren't designed to be loveable. Character development is complicated - partially due to the writing styles and partially because of how short of a time-frame this is set over (thursday, friday, saturday, sunday) - but there is certainly some from some of the characters especially during the final climax.

It's not perfect, there's a fair few flaws. For one, the constant writing style changes can be confusing at first and with so many characters it can be hard to remember who everyone is. I had to write down a list of everyone and who they where, what they did, etc just to remember (though I think that is what you're intended to do to be fair). The puzzle as well was incredibly complicated and required a few logic leaps - some information also gets withheld from the reader which was a bit fustrating and sort of lessened one of the parts of the ending for me as I just didn't get it before the reveal. Some of the non-fiction parts as well - while most of them felt incredibly random in placement some did piece together and make sense as you read on - they just felt like "why is this here?" I learnt a fair bit (I'm not a major reader of murder mysteries and/or classics either) and certainly got interested in a fair few books just because of this book, but like why is some of this in here? Like did I really need to learn about Oulipo to understand more of the book's story?

It's funny in parts as well, which is well placed and helps bring up the mood a bit quite nicely. The clues are - mostly - well laid out and make sense. While there are some leaps in logic and some clues feel a tad unnatural, you can trace them back and see how it all connects pretty easily. The twists and reveals are parts of the puzzles so they're not fully intended to be like major suprises/completely unpredictable. There's certainly some unpredicable-ness however, and since I wasn't smart enough to be able to solve everything myself, some of the reveals where a suprise.

I think overall, it's well worth a read. It's an incredibly unique piece of literature and I think everyone from murder mystery buffs to people new to the genre would enjoy it. Just don't expect an easy read!

This is a very strange book and will split people like marmite. Myself, I’m just not sure… I like the writing style and the elements that make up the divided narrative but I also think there might be a touch too much ‘cleverness’ to really engage a neutral reader who stumbles across it.

It’s set in a posh country club which is beautifully drawn. The cast of characters include the usual cliches and are quite unlikeable. There is a private detective but why is he there? Then there are deaths and the story becomes weirder. It’s part written in second person, which does take a bit of getting used to but I quite liked that. "You wonder why so and so does this"… yes you do wonder… but then there’s a stage play where a large part is played by "the reader" and I got a bit lost. The ending is also confusing but that might be just me…

I did like the interruptions where the author talks about the history of crime fiction and fictional tropes. These did seem strange but overall the broken narrative takes away from the overall story for me. This is an author I’ll watch out for though, as I’m curious to see how he tops this book.

I was given a copy of this book by NetGalley.

This was unusual with frequent pauses to explain the history of various murder mysteries, the plot itself was fun, with an array of characters and suspects.

When someone is found dead at a country club following their annual Fourth of July celebrations, a private detective sets out to solve the murder. However this is not just any murder mystery story, in fact you as the reader will play a part.

An outstanding book that is so original and unique.

West Heart Kill is a brilliant reading experience. I have never felt so involved in a story before and it is completely different to anything I have ever read. You may never read a murder mystery in the same way again!

Dann McDorman has set up a superb plot as the foundation for his twist on the mystery genre. It is extremely clever and so well-written, I loved everything about it.

This is definitely a book that you won't want to miss out on.

Thank you NetGalley and Raven Books for sending this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for my copy of this book.

My review is going to be completely honest. I didn’t like it. The idea was good-a private detective arrives in a private community. Nobody knows who hired him and why. A shooting, a suicide and two murders that he tries desperately to solve. It could have been good.

However the author of the book stops the flow of the story often to talk directly to the author. To direct us and to point out clues and other things about the story. He writes about other others, their characters and plot lines. He defines things like murder and mystery to the reader. It was well researched and detailed but it just wasn’t for me.

I read to enjoy a story. To get lost in it and find out what happened as I read. I don’t read non-fiction often as it’s not my preference.

This may be a great book for some but for me unfortunately it wasn’t one I enjoyed and I desperately progressed to the end.

Apologies to the author.

I thought the synopsis sounded good, however I really struggled with this one and sadly did not finish. Not a usual style of writing and it just wasn't for me.
Thank you netgally for the ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review

I really didn’t enjoy this book, too many characters, didn’t like the story. I struggled to finish this book.

West Heart Kill is a great mystery but I just couldn't get along with the author's introductions and future interjections. I don't want to be told how to construct a great story nor do I want to be involved in the mystery's solution. Take all that away and I would have written a more positive review but others might enjoy it's unique properties.