Conviction

 Reese Witherspoon’s book club picks are my personal guilty pleasure reads. I discovered Conviction because it was the December 2019 selection for Reese’s book club.  The premise is that Anna becomes obsessed with the podcast Death and the Dana which was a true crime podcast of a wealthy family being murdered on their yacht.  The notion of a character structuring her life around a podcast is quite original and I really enjoyed the twists and turns that this particular plot had taken. I found the story to be engaging enough to feel escapist and bring me into the suspense of the plot.


However having recently come out of the spell of reading Nick Harkaway’s Angelmaker where his plot is entertaining and his prose feels like sheer poetry I found Denise Mina’s writing style sub-par. The style is very informal and what I would expect from a thriller that is receiving celebrity endorsement. However it was not remarkable either.   I also have mixed feelings on the main character of the book…it seemed like enough was divulged to keep the plot going forward and but the character lacked more depth for my taste.


Overall, it is what I would categorize as a good Sunday afternoon read. It was escapist enough to be entertaining but it was not remarkable enough to stand out for me.  But on a lazy day where I needed a break from the world, a book that I give a 3/5 rating on Goodreads that is still escapist definitely fits the bill for me.