Amazon.com.au:Customer reviews: We Begin at the End: Crime Novel of the Year Award Winner 2021

Top positive review

Amazing!

Reviewed in Australia on 29 March 2022

This story was was an amazing page turner. So many emotions vying throughout, with so many unexpected twists and turns, right up until the final page. I couldn’t stop reading it, but didn’t want it to end. Such powerful writing. Highly recommend.

2 people found this helpful

Top critical review

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Kindle Customer

Most depressing

Reviewed in Australia on 15 March 2022

Most depressing storyline not believable at all will not read another from the author ever, stretching this to get the minimum words

3 people found this helpful

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Kindle Customer

Most depressing

Reviewed in Australia on 15 March 2022

Verified Purchase

Most depressing storyline not believable at all will not read another from the author ever, stretching this to get the minimum words

3 people found this helpful

Helpful

Strange Writing Style

Reviewed in Australia on 30 May 2022

The pacing of this book was very, very slow and the book was hard to get into. Most of the characters had ridiculous names and for the most part were unlikeable. The story had some holes in it that were not explained. The ending was interesting, and that was the best part.

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purple_jellie

Sure it's a great story

Reviewed in Australia on 1 August 2022

I WANT to read this book but the authors disjointed style of sentence construction is making it hard to immerse myself. It's going back on the shelf, unfortunately. Too distracting & jaring.

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From other countries

patp

Not for me

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 28 April 2020

Verified Purchase

Not for me - at the moment anyway. I could not get to grips with the writing style and found it very slow and at times irritating, The name of one of the main characters 'Walk' really got on my nerves for some reason. Lastly I was not convinced it was a story of an all American township past or present. Perhaps I will try again at a later date, but I have already tried twice and slapped it shut in annoyance both times!

50 people found this helpful

Sandy M

Misery

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 22 October 2020

Verified Purchase

I know this has garnered fabulous reviews. I read widely and a lot. I found this slow, the writing dull and the characters so mired in misery that death seemed a fair option for them all. I saw no beauty in the writing and cared so little I gave up quarter way through. I rarely don’t finish books but ploughing through this was a punishment exercise.

37 people found this helpful

SACB

A mediocre story

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 8 September 2020

Verified Purchase

I bought this book because I made the mistake of seeing all the glowing reviews listed ad nauseam. As I found it a waste of a few hours of my time, I was moved to write a review. I have the impression the author likes himself too much, and is not as witty as he thinks he is. I have read and greatly enjoyed Jane Harper's 'The Dry', but this isn't a patch on her novel. This story left me feeling cold.

25 people found this helpful

Ingrid Tabash

Not recommended

Reviewed in the United States on 9 March 2021

Verified Purchase

I don’t know if the publisher paid a bunch of people to write 5 star reviews or what, but when I read “one of the best books I’ve ever read” over and over, I have to wonder if there’s some payola or just a crazy coincidence that so many readers have read so many crummy books that this one would be one of the best ever.
The characters here are mainly stereotypes except for Duchess, the heroine, who is just so tirelessly nasty and boringly profane that I was sick of her quickly. The other characters change behaviors and actions so often that they soon become untenable, as the author manipulates the reader unashamedly and as he does so, the plot becomes ridiculous. In the end the whole book collapses into a pile of nonsense. Not recommended.

460 people found this helpful

Alan J

Just not the style for me!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 1 August 2021

Verified Purchase

Despite every single one of my favourite authors saying how great this book was, I really struggled to get one third of the way before giving up.
Set in the present day but the main reference is a crime some years ago. I always got the feeling I'd walked into a movie half way through and what I was reading was telling me what I'd missed in the first half.
With so many rave reviews, I came to the conclusion that not every great novel is a good read for everybody!
I guess we all have one novel that we just don't feel comfortable with.
Crime novel on the year only getting one star? Hard to read the account of the victim through her niece who wasn't born then, so my view is purely personal and don't feel it's a real reflection of the award winning book, but you can't please everyone!

10 people found this helpful

Arthur C. Schneider

Swindled, lied to!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 25 January 2021

Verified Purchase

I doubt the writer has ever been to California. None of the places he refers to exist and the environment he tries to create is not like any location in all of California. The characters are as unbelievable as their names: Walk, Star, Duchess. A writer is most successful when writing about what they know, Chris Whitaker doesn't know anything about California (I have lived there over 50 years). All the praises this book received the quotes all over the jacket are misleading. Threw it in the recycle bin after page 50, a waste of time.

11 people found this helpful

Jandysim

So disappointed in this book

Reviewed in the United States on 10 April 2021

Verified Purchase

Such glowing reviews, so many stars, so disappointed. The writer lives in England and if he had set his story there I might have more enthralled with his prose. The novel is, instead, set in a town in California near the Pacific Coast. Mr Whittaker's grasp of American English definitely needed a fact checker since there are quite a few jarring mistakes that kept diverting my attention from the plot. Americans, at least in California, do not call a 6 pack of beer a 'sixer', or refer to mustard as 'French's', or hot dogs, or franks as 'frankfurters'. Women in California do not 'fall pregnant'. they get pregnant. In California we turn off the TV or turn off the garden hose, Mr. Whittaker's characters 'cut the TV' and 'cut the hose'. He refers to a cute town as looking as though it had been 'lifted from Anaheim', does he mean Disneyland? Kids who ride up on their bikes rest their hand on their 'Stelbers', pray, what ARE Stelbers? In California no small towns have a 'butcher's' as a separate shop, butcher's are in larger-or sometimes smaller- markets. If these people live near Salinas, as he purports, they would not be talking about the baseball team the Angels, but about the Giants. His place and street names are laughably non-Californian-Cape Haven, Bitterwater, Vermont, Pensacola-and I'm only on page 38. A deer would never be roaming 'the Mendocino' which first of all is a long way from Salinas, and is the name of a County in the State, as well as a town in the County of Mendocino, and while there might be deer in Mendocino there is NO area ever referred to as 'the Mendocino'. If Walk is traveling 100 miles from the area near Salinas to the prison to pick up Vincent he would be nowhere near the town of Hanford, and there is no 'Central Valley Highway' anywhere in the state. I've gotten as far as page 65 and have just noticed he has a street named Cassidy and a young girl who torments Duchess also named Cassidy...oh, and there is a character named 'Dickie Darke'...seriously?. I'm sorry, I can't continue to read this; why oh why did his publisher not have an editor check these things, and why oh why did the author not place this perhaps intriguing novel in a setting and country with which he was familiar? Sadly, on page 72 my journey with Star, Duchess, and Walk is over.

369 people found this helpful

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5 star		56%
4 star		31%
3 star		10%
2 star		2%
1 star		1%

We Begin at the End: Crime Novel of the Year Award Winner 2021

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