Review – Death in Her Hands by Ottessa Moshfegh

Rating: 2 out of 5.

I received an e-ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I absolutely adored My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh, so I was really stoked to of gotten the ARC of her new book Death in Her Hands from NetGalley. Unfortunately, I didn’t like it nearly as much as I hoped I would.

A unique take on a mystery where elderly newly widowed Vesta and her pet dog discover a note on a walk in the forest – “Her name was Magda. Nobody will ever know who killed her. It wasn’t me. Here is her dead body.” The rest of the story follows Vesta’s internal monologue as she imagines and attempts to find the origin of the note and the murdered Magda in her small town.

This book is very strange, and usually I adore very strange but it just didn’t grip me like I needed it to. Definitely check it out if you like weird fiction as I think it hits a certain niche perfectly, just not my ‘weird fiction’ niche.

You would like this book if you like internal monologues, stream of consciousness, unreliable narrators and character studies. If you enjoyed the protagonist from Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk, or the confusing narrative of I’m Thinking of Ending Things by Iain Reid or Ottessa Moshfegh’s other books this might be right up your alley!

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