Blue Monday: A Frieda Klein Novel (1)

I am a little torn about this book. I loved the setting, the way the author (in fact two authors - husband and wife) described London, especially the parts you would never see as a tourist. The first chapter, telling about an abduction of a little girl more than twenty years ago was quite catching. Then the author starts to introduce the main characters - and there are many of them, so the book gets a little slow. Some of the events seem to be almost unrelated and the main character, Frieda Klein, a psychologist with personal problems, is not entirely believable all the time - and I have problems accepting that a layperson - okay, a psychologist in this case, which partly explains it - helping the police solves the case much faster and better than the police. On the other hand, the characters were well drawn, the case was interesting Spoiler- although I had some problems with the twin issue. I know that there seems to be a bond between identical twins, even when they are not raised together and that their lifes tend to have a lot of similarities - but some of the stuff in this novel was hard to believe.I liked the book and will read the sequels - in fact I already read the second book of the series before the first (not a great idea in this case - too many spoilers).

This book has been in my possession for what feels like forever (since 2012 to be precise) and I finally managed to read it through. What a waste of time that was. I don't even know where to start. First off - I really liked the Prologue. And that's about it. This book is just boring, there is no real plot twist (besides the rather obvious one towards the end which I really liked. This plot twist is the only reason this books rating is 2 stars instead of only 1.), not one of the characters is really likable and I assume you could have told the same story using half the amount of pages. As for me, I won't read the other Frieda Klein-Books. But that was rather obvious, wasn't it?

I am a little torn about this book. I loved the setting, the way the author (in fact two authors - husband and wife) described London, especially the parts you would never see as a tourist. The first chapter, telling about an abduction of a little girl more than twenty years ago was quite catching. Then the author starts to introduce the main characters - and there are many of them, so the book gets a little slow. Some of the events seem to be almost unrelated and the main character, Frieda Klein, a psychologist with personal problems, is not entirely believable all the time - and I have problems accepting that a layperson - okay, a psychologist in this case, which partly explains it - helping the police solves the case much faster and better than the police. On the other hand, the characters were well drawn, the case was interesting - although I had some problems with the twin issue. I know that there seems to be a bond between identical twins, even when they are not raised together and that their lifes tend to have a lot of similarities - but some of the stuff in this novel was hard to believe. I liked the book and will read the sequels - in fact I already read the second book of the series before the first (not a great idea in this case - too many spoilers).