My Year in Books 2021: November

I'm a little bit late posting this one, and there's only one book on the list this month. Ah well... I'm sure I'll read more in December!

In case you're interested, here are my posts from the rest of the year: January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October

The Beresford by Will Carver (2021)

The next book I read was another from my Abominable Books pile. I’d previously received Carver’s Hinton Hollow Death Trip in one of my boxes – in fact it was the featured book in my first ever box – and I quite enjoyed it, despite having some small criticisms. So I thought I knew what I was getting with Carver’s latest novel, but it was the blurb that really enticed me. The ‘Beresford’ of the title is an idiosyncratic hotel that’s seen better days. Run by enigmatic landlady Mrs May, The Beresford is now divided up into apartments. The tenants come and go – and how this happens is sort of the story’s main focus. Tenants arrive and stay until they are eventually murdered by one of the others; each time a death takes place, the killer has just sixty seconds to hide the body before the doorbell rings to signal a new arrival. The premise of this one is amazing, and I thought it would be right up my street. Sadly, the execution wasn’t quite to my taste. The brilliant setting is woefully underused – the entire story focuses on the four flats on the ground and first floors, and we only get a very brief glimpse of the much more interesting floors above. Each of the murders/body disposals is told in a lot of detail, and after a while it feels quite repetitive. Ultimately, the story felt like it could’ve been a lot shorter and it fell a little flat for me.