A Kiss After Dying, Ashok Banker, Penguin Random House, ISBN: 9780241510520

THE premise of this book sounded so interesting, and I was so ready for a femme fatal revenge novel, however, the book ended up being such a chore to complete.

There were so many things that seemed questionable and far-fetched. I get that it is fiction, but there wasn’t any believability or relatability.

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The most annoying aspect was the over-sexualisation of our protagonist, who is a self-proclaimed assassin. It is the typical example of a male author writing a female character.

Our protagonist was also, unfortunately, unlikeable and unrelatable.

Then there is the writing style. It was agonisingly slow due to all the repetition, and unnecessary and irrelevant information.

And the number of acronyms … It was just too much! It was annoying to have to stop and figure out some of the less obvious ones.

I’m not squeamish when it comes to moral ambiguity. And I appreciate when a book makes me empathise with a villain or leaves me confused about who the true villain is. While this book was chock full of moral ambiguity, I failed to connect with any of the characters. So, I did not wrestle with my emotions.

I will give the book one credit – it served one of the biggest plot twists ever! I had to flip back and review older chapters to try and find any clues. It really did catch me off guard. It was just a shame that the rest of the book didn’t grab me. – Mariclair Smit 2/5 stars

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