Book 34/30.
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Whew! I’mma need a few days to wrap my head around the fact that the person who wrote The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is the same person who wrote A Spot of Bother. The former is such a lovely book while the latter is below average.
I bought this book a few years ago for KES 100 (less than 1 USD) because I really enjoyed The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and was looking forward to reading the follow-up to the author’s internationally beloved first book written for adults. But when I saw it has a rating of 3.49 on Goodreads my enthusiasm waned and I only read a handful of pages over the weekend before picking it up in earnest on Monday. I read half the book on Monday and Tuesday before barrelling through the second half on Wednesday evening. I only ever read a book (or most of it) in one sitting either because it is unputdownable, or because I cannot imagine spending one more day reading it. In this case it was the latter. Both the storyline and the characters were only mildly interesting, and the book had none of the charm of its predecessor.
I do not know if Mark Haddon’s other books are more in the style of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (🤩😍) or A Spot of Bother(🥴), and I will never know as I will not risk reading more below average books to find out.
** A guide to ratings **
1 star – did not like it
2 stars – it was okay
3 stars – liked it
4 stars – really liked it
5 stars – it was amazing
Lwile the Leo 