Jaclyn’s Reviews > The Bee Sting > Status Update

How do you like it?!

So I’d only heard negative feedback before starting. It was not John’s ‘cup of tea’ and the reviews are definitely polarised on it. I’m oddly in the middle so far. It’s extremely lengthy and I’m not sure all sections were necessary to the plot and as a result the pace meanders quite slowly. I also think it is quite indulgent of an author to hold the reader’s interest that long and I think I could have done with it wrapping up about p400. There are also some very dark sections in it and odd sections where Imelda’s voice has no punctuation and the tenses in Cass’s section jump around making it odd to read. This is not what you need in an already lengthy book. That said I do enjoy the author’s narrative which I find captivating, I do really want to find out what happens, it’s an ambitious book in all the threads it try’s to bring together and I just want to adopt PJ the little boy in it. It’s definitely got shades of Matilda- he could have based the family on the Wormwoods. Everyone refers to ‘that ending’ so I’m not sure if my views will change when I find out how it all turns out. Also these final 100 pages are getting more fast paced page turning style as all the threads come together and the climax builds. You should read it though as I’ve never read a book like it.

Just finished it- literally gasping at the end! Definitely read it. Only dropped a star for me because of the weird grammatical stuff that made it hard to read but an incredible book.