Caroline Builta's Reviews > The Examiner

Look, I would say I am a superfan of Janice Hallett's. I will read anything she writes. I love playing detective alongside her characters. So it really, really pains me to give this a 2 star review, but this was a miss for me.

I was sooo excited about the premise of this novel: a chaotic art graduate course set at a school in London culminating in a murder, but you spend the book trying to figure out - who is dead (if anyone actually is)? How? Why? Anyone who knows me knows that I love a campus novel, so I was pumped for this. However, it fell short of my expectations.

My main gripe is the overly detailed focus on art. While I appreciate depth, the meticulous descriptions of multimedia art projects overshadowed the core mystery. This imbalance made the pacing sluggish. Hallett’s previous works masterfully balanced detail with action, but "The Examiner" spends too much time in the minutae and not enough on the unraveling of the mystery.

Another disappointment, while avoiding spoilers, is that this is the first of Hallett's novels where I felt like the readers couldn't play along. That's the fun of Hallett's work for me, and that element was really diminished here.

Overall, I am still a huge fan of Hallett, and will absolutely continue to read anything she writes. I remain hopeful her next book will recapture what I love so much about her work.

Thank you to NetGalley, Atria Books, and Janice Hallett for the review copy in exchange for my honest review.

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Please respect my privacy at this time 😔 review to come