The Fury by Alex Michaelides

 

Do you like stories with unreliable narrators?  I do with two of my favorites being The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie and Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn.

Lana Farrar is a famous ex-movie star.  She has invited her friends to her private Greek island for a holiday.  When a murder occurs who is the culprit?

My thoughts on this thriller:

·       Elliot Chase, Lana’s best friend, is the first-person narrator.  He is unreliable and a mystery himself.

·       Elliot has a hard time sticking to the story.  He has one surprise in him, but when he gets to a second surprise, it was too much for me. 

·       Elliot addresses the audience, breaking the fourth wall, which I liked, but he also seemed to know things that he wouldn’t have known as he wasn’t in the room or with those certain characters.  He says at the beginning of the book that maybe he is making up scenes.  I wasn’t sure how to feel about this.

·       This story moves between being a love story or a story of obsession.

·       Nothing or no one is as it seems in this book.

·       I enjoyed the exotic Greek setting, especially when reading this during a Wisconsin winter.

·       I was reading this novel quickly as it was an engaging thriller, but it lost steam by the end for me.

·       I listened to an interview with author Alex Michaelides and he stated that he meticulously plotted his first two books, but went with the flow on this one.  You could tell.  I loved one of his previous books, The Silent Patient, which was tightly plotted.

·       I didn’t really like any of the characters.  It was more the style of the story that kept me engaged.  I liked that fury became a character itself.

Overall, while The Fury didn’t keep me engaged through the entire book, I did enjoy reading it and being a part of the fury.

Book Source:  Review copy from NetGalley and Celadon Books.  Thank-you!