Reviews with content warning for Body horror - The Snowman

Reviews tagging 'Body horror'

nieva098's review

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dark mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

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laurenleigh's review

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dark tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

I’m getting to the end of the year where I have random reading challenge prompts left, and this was my pick for Nordic Noir. I love a mystery detective novel, but the super dark, explicit, gritty quality to Nordic Noir just turns me off. Maybe I just wasn’t enjoying it, but it also felt like there could have been some editing. They are certain they found the culprit like five times before they actually solve the case.

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ashleymg99's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

I read this as part of StoryGraph‘s Read the World challenge for Norway.

The first half of the book was slow and hard for me to get into - but the further into it I got, the more invested I became, and the more it started to pick up. Overall, I thought it was a good mystery, and one that the reader can solve on their own, which is always nice.

Spoilers in my critique - don’t read if you want to try and solve the mystery!

my biggest complaint is that I felt like the murder was “solved” too many times - every suspect they investigated was definitely the culprit, but when there’s still 200 pages left in the book, you know that they have the wrong person! It just made you start to think that any person who was a suspect couldn’t be the killer, and it took some of the suspense out of the scenes where they interrogated or accused people. Of course, Nesbø explains this away in the book and even uses it as a plot device (with the whole “Katrine breaking down, which only lead to ANOTHER “we caught the killer!”), but as the reader, I was getting tired of them saying they “caught the killer” so prematurely every time. If the police weren’t so i competent, they probably could have solved the murder in half the time! Remember kids, #ACAB, not just in America)

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ruthmoog's review

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dark mysterious medium-paced

3.0

My favourite thing about this was descriptions of Norway, specifically Bergen - the rainiest city in Europe - and Oslo - even the Kon Tiki museum gets a mention! - and Flåm too. Although, these are the scene for some grizzly unusual murders in the book.

Harry is an anti-hero, living with addiction and a dual reputation as a great detective and a terrible detective. He is fixated on sex and this seems to impact on all his relationships with women, and this feels like a book written from a male perspective.

There are lots of sub-plots which are parallels, eg the difference between Mathias and Rakels reactions to infedelity, the relationship to Norway's African communities through the shop and the unofficial medical clinic and the relationship with racism and popularity.
But mostly there are so many clunky absurd happenings, from the symbolic snowmen, the surreal action-movie montents from Harry, the mould man, the super clever detective moments juxtaposed with the super stupid detective moments... Argh.

Anyway, I thought it was good but not amazing. The murders were creative and horrible. I felt it would make a good movie, so I will probably watch the film interpretation.

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