title: The Blue Hourauthor: Paula Hawkins
published: 10.29.2024
publisher: Mariner Books
genre(s): thrillers
pages: 305
source: library
format: hardcover
buy/shelve it: Amazon | B&N | Kobo | BookBub | BookHype | Goodreads
rating:
the blurb
Welcome to Eris: An island with only one house, one inhabitant, one way out. Unreachable from the Scottish mainland for twelve hours each day.
Once home to Vanessa: A famous artist whose notoriously unfaithful husband disappeared twenty years ago.
Now home to Grace: A solitary creature of the tides, content in her own isolation.
But when a shocking discovery is made in an art gallery far away in London, a visitor comes calling.
And the secrets of Eris threaten to emerge . . .
A masterful novel that is as page-turning as it is unsettling, The Blue Hour recalls the sophisticated suspense of Shirley Jackson and Patricia Highsmith, and cements Hawkins’s place among the very best of our most nuanced and stylish storytellers.
- a few notes
- my review
- the good & the bad
POV: 3rd person
keywords/phrases: art, obsession, betrayal
tropes: unreliable narrator, twist ending, cliffhanger
spice: 0🔥
language: 2🤬🤬
read this if… you love suspenseful thrillers with morally grey characters and LOTS of twists and turns.
the good
- morally grey characters = lots of potential bad guys
- dark themes
- twists and turns
the bad
- also morally grey characters = hard to root for anyone
- some story threads left dangling
The first 2/3 of The Blue Hour is wildly addictive, the story twisting and turning several related storylines. I love format of the storytelling, the way it supported the different storylines. Some of the narrative is told in the present, some in the past, some of it through snippets of letters and diary entries. These things come from the perspectives of multiple people, giving the reader more insight into the overall story arch, which really helped develop the suspense.
It was the final third of the book that left me wanting… more. It felt rushed, even surface-level. It provided some answers but not enough. I love a cliffhanger, even on a standalone, but there was just too much left unresolved for me. Even the tone was different, in some indescribable way. It almost felt like the author was just ready to be done with the book. After having been so engaged throughout the rest of the book, I was expecting something more intense, I think.
Beyond that, the book was very much character-centric. Main or supporting, the characters were well developed and interesting. I also love a morally grey character, and there were plenty of them in The Blue Hour. I love not being quite sure what to make of a character; I think it adds to the suspense. But there were so many of them in this story that it made it difficult to really connect to any of them in a real way.
Despite these things, I enjoyed the book. It was gripping, even if I didn’t particularly like any of the characters. Yes, I felt like the ending was a little underwhelming, but the book is still well worth reading.
About Paula Hawkins
PAULA HAWKINS worked as a journalist for fifteen years before writing her first novel. Born and brought up in Zimbabwe, she moved to London in 1989. Her first thriller The Girl on the Train became a global phenomenon, selling over 23 million copies. Published in over fifty languages, it was a No.1 bestseller around the world and a box-office-hit film starring Emily Blunt. Paula’s most recent thrillers, Into the Water and A Slow Fire Burning, were also instant No.1 bestsellers. In 2021 A Slow Fire Burning was nominated for Thriller of the Year at the British Book Awards.
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Reading this book contributed to these challenges:
- 2025 52 Books Reading Challenge
- 2025 Alphabet Soup Reading Challenge: Author Edition
- 2025 Beyond the Bookends Reading Challenge
- 2025 Cloak & Dagger Reading Challenge
- 2025 Linz the Bookworm & Logophile Reading Challenge
- 2025 PopSugar Reading Challenge
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