The Main Character
Jaclyn Goldis
A bestselling thriller author arranges a luxury train trip that is not what it appears to be in this electrifying modern homage to Agatha Christie from the author of the “tense and twisty” (Julie Clark, New York Times bestselling author) The Chateau . Reclusive, mysterious author Ginevra Ex is famous for her unusual approach to crafting her big bestselling she hires real people and conducts intensive interviews, then fictionalizes them. Her latest main character, Rory, is thrilled when Ginevra presents her with an extravagant bonus—a lavish trip along Italy’s Mediterranean coast on the famed, newly renovated Orient Express. But when Rory boards the train, she’s stunned to discover that her brother, her best friend, and even her ex-fiancé are passengers, as well. All invited by Ginevra, all hiding secrets. With each stop, from Cinque Terre to Rome to Positano, it becomes increasingly clear that Ginevra has masterminded the ultimate real life twisty plot with Rory as her main character. And as Ginevra’s deceptions mount, and the lies and machinations of Rory’s travel companions pile up, Rory begins to fear that her trip will culminate like one of Ginevra’s with a murder or two. In the opulent compartments of the iconic train, Rory must untangle the shocking reasons why Ginevra wanted them all aboard—and to what deadly end. Another stylish and compulsively readable mystery from Jaclyn Goldis, this is the perfect read for fans of Ruth Ware, Lucy Foley, and Paula Hawkins.
Publication Year: 2024
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Comping this book to Agatha Christie is hugely misleading. It isn't even a question of quality (although there's definitely a huge gap there too...), but they're simply not the same genre. The Main Character isn't a whodunit at all, and it's not really much of a thriller; it's a family drama with a little murder thrown in late into the book (in the thriller vein, still not whodunit genre at all) for kicks. It's also not exactly...good. The pacing is stultifyingly slow, the characters are bland and sound too much the same to bother with different POV chapters, and the plot is a sloppy tangle of loose threads that go absolutely nowhere, and the silliest possible solution for every thread that *does* end up mattering. The one thing I thought this book might have going for it was the setting - the glamorous train trip through Italy that is meant to put one in mind of Murder on the Orient Express - but enough isn't really made of the train aspect of it all, and somehow even that managed to be a letdown. Stuffed with filler, meandering and tripping over its own dropped ideas, The Main Character is a miss for me. Thank you to the publisher for the advance copy in exchange for an honest review.
0 A disjointed family drama mystery
A bestselling author who famously bases her characters on real people sends her latest chosen protagonist on a luxury train through Italy, surprising her onboard with travel companions from her past.
Though this was billed as an homage to Murder on the Orient Express, the comparison is quite thin and, despite an interesting cast of characters, the mystery plot is weak and discombobulated. The luxury train setting doesn't gel at all with the tangled family drama Goldis weaves.
Two climactic moments are extremely abrupt with no denouement and there are oodles of loose threads left dangling, particularly in the way of secondary characters tossed into the periphery of a very different story than the one set up.
CW: losing a parent to Alzheimer's; lots of antisemitism
Thank you to publisher Atria Books for my advance copy, provided in exchange for an honest review. This book will be available on May 21, 2024.
0Thank you NetGalley and Atria Books for the ARC of this book in exchange for honest feedback.
I really wanted to love this book. As a classics fan I love a good retelling or “based on” but this left a lot to be desired. This book was so hard to get into. One minute I was totally interested in the plot and the next minute it felt like the book was dragging on and I was struggling to figure out why this scene was even relevant to the story. And the book constantly felt like it was building to something but the ending was just meh.
The characters were superficial and unlikable. Towards the end I didn’t really care who the victim/perpetrator was because none of them had any redeeming qualities.
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