Julie's Reviews > The Appeal

The Appeal by Janice Hallett is a 2022 Atria Books publication.

A group of caregivers and Thespians rally around a young child diagnosed with cancer by raising money for treatment that is costly and currently unavailable, except in America.

The parents and grandparents of the child launch an appeal for cash and people are quick to respond, but when a newcomer to the circle starts to ask questions, it would appear someone wants her silenced…

Naturally, when a synopsis openly challenges a veteran mystery reader by basically assigning them the task of solving the mystery with only text and email messages, I was intrigued.

Thank goodness someone, anyone, is willing to go off the beaten path, throw the formula out the window, and try a different approach, right?

That said, a fresh approach is not enough. It must work for it be effective, and unfortunately, the setup, imaginative though it may be, was too confusing and disorganized in the beginning. It didn't hold my attention at all, and though I stuck with it, I was mostly bored.

Too many characters, random introduction of characters, a thread involving time spent in Africa that was entirely too vague and was never fully explained- though one does get the gist of it- mostly- it was just too disjointed, too busy, and not at all suspenseful, in my opinion.

I applaud the author for trying something different, but I didn’t feel this approach was successful. I really did have high hopes for this one, but sadly it fell flat for me.

There has been some high praise for this one- so check this one out for yourself. Hopefully, you will have better luck with it than I did.