Book Review: Murder on The Orient Express

I’ll bottom line it for you guys, I hated this book.

My 2 best friends and I have created our own semi book club. We all live in different states so it’s a good way for us to have something to motivate us to reach out to one another. So, it wasn’t my decision to pick up this book.

The story centers around a celebrated detective who has never been unable to solve a case in his career. He is travelling by train when in the middle of the night, while stuck in a snow bank, one of the travelers is murdered. The book follows the detective as he tries to solve the mystery and understand the killer and their motivation.

But really, I hated it. I’m not a big fan of mystery books to begin with (I HATE being confused the whole book or show or movie). That probably made me a bit biased going into this book. And, to be fair, if you really like that kind of thing, you may be into this book. For me, it lacked depth. It dragged on, the language was tiring; I felt like someone was pulling me through this book kicking and screaming. Honestly, the only reason I got through it was because I just can’t put a book down half finished but trust me, I was not happy about it.

The premise was kind of interesting but the execution, for me, wasn’t impressive. I even watched the movie after finishing the book to see if maybe I was just not enjoying the way it was written. Wasted my time.

The one interesting thing I found in this book was a decision the detective has to make at the end of the book. When the mystery is solved he has to choose between his duty as a detective to tell the authorities what happened, or to be loyal to his morals and turn a blind eye. It’s extremely symbolic of the idea that there are 2 kinds of evil, those who are evil and those who ignore it. But the book plays devil’s advocate and really gets the reader thinking what they would do in this situation.

If you’re extremely intrigued, give it a go you may have a different opinion than I did. If you’re looking for some background noise, watch the movie. If you’re looking for a good page turner, I would recommend you keep moving.

Author: Sally

25 year old mechanical engineering graduate. Just trying to figure it all out like everyone else View all posts by Sally