Kathie Dragon

I love the Cormoran Strike séries, even the TV adaptation. But this book I hated and could barely finish. I think JK Rowland was reacting to her situation wherein she’s been roasted and cancelled online for some of her statements. So she decided to explore the dark side of social media and the ways in which reputations, careers, one’s self esteem, can be destroyed by trolls on social media. But in this book, there are so many characters to keep track of, with different names depending on where they are posting, that it was a chore rather than a pleasure to follow the plot. Her device of having side by side conversations, columns and columns in minuscule print, made reading even harder. By the end, when the villain was revealed, it was like: “Who? Oh, him.” And I didn’t think that particular character played much of a role. Just painful Let’s get back to Cormoran, et al, and away from whatever axe Rowland has to grind.