Janice Hallett's "The Appeal" certainly appealed to me with its innovative format. Presenting the book as she does allows the reader to feel part of the investigation. I found it to be an accurate depiction of the players in an amateur dramatics company and there are some real laugh out loud moments. I loved the format and how the story unfolded gradually from all the different POVs. Each character's personality comes through loud and clear in their correspondence. It's a passive aggressive paradise! I felt it went on a wee bit too long, and dipped slightly in the middle, but other than that it was a very enjoyable read. My head was spinning by the end of it! There's a big cast to keep track of and many theories at play so bring a notepad and pen!

Femi and Charlotte, two law students, are asked to investigate a case of wrongful conviction by QC Roderick Tanner. They are given files to research and find out who the murderer is.
Set in a small English town and centred on an amateur dramatic group where one of them has been murdered. The files contain the evidence to find the real killer.
Told in a series of emails there are a lot of lies, misdirections and blind alleys - I found it quite confusing as there were so many people involved and I had to re read large parts of the book..
It is an original book but I struggled to finish it.
Thanks to Netgalley for allowing me to read this book in return for a fair review.
3 Stars ⭐️

Kindly sent from the publishing team for an honest review. Full review is on my blog.

I like the way this book invites you to solve the mystery. The premise of the book has two significant events that the book is based on. One is a drama group and the second is a young girl suffering from rare cancer requiring cancer treatment. Through the various mediums of communication platforms, we learn more about the characters and they do not appear to be who you think they are. I dont want to give too much of the plot away but you can watch the story unfold.

This book was sent to me as an ARC on NetGalley. However all opinions are of my own.
The whole text is told through text and e-mail. A little hard to keep up with all of the times and dates but manageable. At first it gives off the impression that it’s merely just a charity appeal to help a young girl, Poppy who has a rare form of cancer and her treatment will equate to over £1 million pounds. Throughout, you can see the story developing and certain things start to ring read flags. It’s not until someone ends up dead that an investigation starts.. is Poppy really poorly or is this a ‘logical’ reason to raise money?
Really enjoyed the concept but thought the ending was very abrupt.

I had such high hopes for this book! The theme is so spot on for our times and the covid pandemic has made conspiracy theorists even more manic in their activities. Anyway the book started off brilliantly , the writing flowed and I was hooked , but then something happened, it almost felt like the writer became bored with the topic and veered off into the protagonists love life. It has got a twist towards the end but I’m sorry to say this novel left me very flat , finishing it and thinking “is that it !”
Thanks to NetGalley for a Pre published copy for an honest review

I would like to thank the author, the publisher and NetGalley for giving me the opportunity to read an ARC of this book. It was very different to anything else I have read, cleverly written and kept me guessing.

The concept of this book had me excited from the beginning, made up mostly of emails and texts it was a new reading experience for me and it took while for it to me sense to my eyes.
Sadly it wasn't for me, I lost interest round the halfway mark and never fully got back into it

I received a free copy of this book via netgalley and am voluntarily leaving a review.

4.5 ⭐️
I enjoyed this book so much. At first I thought I was going to struggle with the formatting since it’s written strictly in emails and text messaging but it brought so much to the suspense and the page turning quality of the book!

The characters were great, you eventually learned so much about them, even those who you don’t hear from directly, just from some emails and text messages! I also had literally no idea what was going to happen at all throughout this book, you just can’t guess an ending to a book like this. Even though in the end it’s proved we have all the information necessary to work it out!

THIS. BOOK. WAS. AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The blurb had me excited, and as a true crime fanatic I *HAD* to read this one. It didn't disappoint even the slightest. I loved the aspect of following along trying to solve the case as the book unfolded. Very uniquely told and just a fantastic way to tell a story. Five stars, looking for a sixth!

This is a very cleverly written book that puts us, the reader, in the position of a law student.

The novel opens with Roderick Tanner sending a message to two of his first year law students, Olufemi and Charlotte. He sends through all of the correspondence between a group of people to do with a case he is working on. It is written entirely in emails, WhatsApp messages, police interview transcripts, police notebook entries and 999 calls.

We read about a drama group called The Fairway Players, Issy being one of them. She works at St Ann's hospital and introduces new nurses, married couple Samantha and Kel Greenwood into the group. Samantha and Kel previously worked in Africa but why did they come back?

The drama group is very family orientated and the granddaughter of one of the co-founders is diagnosed with Medulloblastoma. Everyone rallies round to create an appeal to raise money for a pioneering treatment from the USA.

Everything is not as it seems. Someone ends up dead. A lot of people have a reason for the murder.

I have never read a book like this and it is very interesting to basically become the law student trying to find out the truth. There are a lot of red herrings and each one is written so plausibly. You are fully submerged in the story and want to work out what has happened for yourself.

Clever, different, unique, original and engrossing.

I have never read a book quite like this before and it kept my attention throughout. I loved the opportunity to become a sleuth myself and I enjoyed all the false trails and red herrings.

All in all a good read.

The Appeal
By Janice Hallett
Pub Date 14 jan 2021
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
This is such a brilliant story the perfect crime story you enjoy kept me in suspense till the end I was hooked from the start it’s full of detailed information like full of email and texts the story told by email and you get to learn about the characters by email in the story it’s easy too understand and the investigation is covered well

The Appeal is an extremely clever and interesting debut book by Janice Hallett. Even the way it is set out in the beginning with a series of emails and random correspondence for the articled clerks to read through for them to collate and discuss between themselves and to ascertain I f there is someone involved in a crime is very clever.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and look forward to reading more books by Janice Hallett in the future.
Highly recommended.

I went into this book without really knowing a lot. I wasn’t very sure on the premise and went into this blindly. This story was formatted very differently from what I am used to with my thrillers. It was all based around emails that have been recovered over a couple of months. We know someone was murdered and we know someone was wrongfully convicted. We also have direct messages thrown in too, where two people are trying to figure out what happened and spitballing ideas at one another.

Due to this story being told through emails I never got to learn very much about the characters at all and didn’t feel like I had a connection with the story at all. I feel like we missed out on a lot of character development and inner thoughts and dialogue which could have lent to the intrigue of the story. Unfortunately I found myself very distanced from the story.

I found it to be quite confusing because it jumped around a lot and we missed out on a lot of replies to emails which made me very confused and felt lost within the story.

Although I found some flaws within this story and it wasn’t particularly for me I did find some of the twists to be fun and shocking. If you like fun and quirky formatted stories this one's for you

I really enjoyed this book, it gripped me from the start, dragged me through until the very end. Quick and easy to read. Would recommend.

A member of an amdram society has been murdered and two legal associates have to wade through the emails and text exchanges of the members to determine who was the killer!
Told through emails and texts the clues are there but can they find them? This was an intriguing read and not what I expected. I do think it will divide a lot of readers’ opinions.
Thank you to netgalley and the publishers for this arc in exchange for my honest review.

I received an ARC of this book thanks to NetGalley and publisher Serpent's Tail / Profile Books in exchange for an honest review.

I was really intrigued by all the buzz surrounding this book. The Appeal is a novel told in epistolary form, a thriller presented as a series of emails and other evidence that you must examine as a detective. The plot itself follows the story of a group of people who are putting on a play together when the daughter of one of the families falls ill with cancer. Wanting to try an expensive experimental treatment, the family aim to raise money from the community. Within this context, there are a lot of rivalries and other events which culminate in the murder of one of the characters.

For most of this book, I was utterly hooked. The email style works well (although the downside of an ARC was there were a lot of format issues, which makes it hard for me to talk about the full experience of it) though it does take some getting used to. I really liked that there was a character we never heard from directly and who we could only build a picture of based on what others said to and about her. There were several undercurrents of tension and things which could go wrong, which helped keep me invested and made me very keen to read on.

However, sadly I think this book fell apart at the ending. After about 75% of the way through, you have gotten almost all of the evidence and so the book switches to text messages between the detectives investigating the case. This worked fine at first but quickly became dull to me. I wish the book had made this section much shorter and just revealed the solution because it wasn't fun for me at all to read 5 separate theories, followed by more speculation, followed by more theorizing. It just dragged a lot and it sucked all the joy out of the eventual reveal for me because the tension and momentum had been lost. I also think there were just a few too many characters to keep track of. Three or four of them could have been cut without much being lost, and it would have made for a tighter story.

Having said that, I still immensely enjoyed this book and I think it's a great way to format a thriller. The plot itself is good and, my issues with presentation aside, the ending is satisfying and works well for the story. I love murder mysteries and trying to piece together clues, so I will always appreciate any book which actually attempts to give you decent clues and encourages you to work things out. If the ending format had been different, this could have easily been a 5 star read for me.

Overall Rating: 3.5/5 stars

This was an excellent crime novel written in a very different way than we are used to. A good read that I recommend!

Wow, what a different read!
I initially struggled to get used to it and to get into the book but loved it in the end! This was not like anything I've read before and it felt like I was part of solving the mystery. I was very chuffed with myself when I picked up on a clue and other times wanted to kick myself for missing another!
It's definitely a book in which you have to concentrate when reading it because otherwise, you will miss out on details that you need to solve the crime. I did get a bit confused at the beginning with all the different characters and names but that's maybe because I'm rubbish at remembering names!
The whole story is in the form of emails and messages and you will never hear 1 of the characters "speak". Femi and Charlotte have been tasked to work through all the correspondence because someone died and someone is on trial for the murder but was the right person arrested?
A very novel way of telling a story so well done to Janice Hallett!

Thank you to NetGalley, Profile Books, Serpent's Tail and Viper for the ARC in exchange for my honest opinion

A terrific, innovative book which was a joy to explore and investigate. I was initially unsure about the email format for the first part of the book, but gradually became drawn into the various threads and relationships between the characters. At one point it felt vaguely transgressive to be reading personal emails that were obviously written without thought for an outside observer. I particularly loved the nuances between what was being written and what was actually felt - confided in emails to another person, and the fact that the reader had to piece together the information themselves from incomplete conversations and trails. Reading between the lines was wonderful and led to several blind alleys and misconceptions, even with Charlotte and Femi, the two articled clerks who were embarking on the investigation themselves. This ellision proved the only awkward part of the novel for me, and I found their repetition of the facts and assumptions initially repetitive and irritating. However they did allow several interpretations of the evidence - usually told to a side-kick like Hastings or Watson in traditional detective stories - and sorted out some of the more subtle connections.

I found this a really enjoyable read and very different in feel from a traditional mystery/ detective story, yet retaining several recognisable elements of the genre. It was cleverly plotted and the gradual release of detail and information was subtle and absorbing. I was gripped and keen to discover the full extent of the intrigue to the very end. Difficult to replicate, but in this age of technological evidence in court cases, surely fertile ground for further investigations? I look forward with interest to another book from this intelligent and fascinating writer.