Book: Beware the Abbot Boys
Author: Chelsea Ichaso
Thank you, NetGalley and Tantor Media, for an advanced audio copy.
This was a really enjoyable small town mystery that had me hooked pretty much from the start.
The setup is intriguing and Ichaso builds the tension well throughout. What I loved most was the way classic monster literature of Frankenstein, Dracula, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. It was such a clever touch to open the brothers’ chapters with quotes from them and assign each to a different monster. Honestly, those quotes did a better job of defining each brother than almost anything else in the book. It really helped me keep them straight, which was no small task given that we are dealing with triplets. I will admit it took me a while to sort out who was who, and without those literary comparisons I might have struggled even more.
The mystery itself was genuinely gripping. I did not see the ending coming, which is always a win for me in this genre.
My one real critique (and I say this as someone who has received the same note and is actively working on it myself) is that some of the details get very repetitive. There is a lot of padding around when a character is described as walking.
The characters were solid if a little one note at times, but the mystery more than carried the story.
A fun, fast read if you enjoy a good small town thriller.
Final score: 4/5
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