This review can also be found at FadedTulips. 
 I have to thank this book so much for getting me out of my reading slump as from the first page I was hooked. Let's get the elephant out of the room early, yeah, there's no way I would've picked this up if it hadn't been J.K. Rowling in disguise as I'm not normally one for crime novels. 
 It did surprise me that I managed to race through this as quickly as I did because as mentioned, I don't tend to read crime novels and I absolutely hated The Casual Vacancy. But I really did enjoy it and even struggled to put it down! 
 Robin is an amazing character and I wish there was more of her in the book. She's definitely my favourite as she feels the most realistic to me and I often end up thinking similar things to her. There's no wonder that so many people manage to connect to her. She needs to ditch Matthew though, what an arse! 
 Cormoran is a good character too and while I didn't enjoy him as much as Robin, I still found him an interesting character with more hidden depths than I was expecting. Honestly, I'm surprised I even connected to him at all as I struggle a lot with smart characters who seem to know everything, maybe it's my inner thickness! 
 On the subject of my intelligence, I also found that the story kept me guessing the whole way through and I was convinced for ages that I knew the killer and that it was so obvious... until it wasn't and I was blown away. I'm sure on a second read through I'll manage to pick up all the little hints. 
 However, even though the ending surprised and shocked me I also found it very confusing. Now, I try to stay spoiler free so I apologise if I end up sounding too vague but to me the killer made no sense and seemed to be a cop-out just so the twist was there. I also don't get the motive for what the murderer did at the start (not the actual murder, I mean) but I guess it did work, so I can't complain too much. 
 The only other negative thing I have to say about the novel is that there seemed to be so much unneeded details and as a result the book felt a little bit bloated and long winded. I personally feel that the book could've been shortened by about fifty pages and there wouldn't be too much lost. 
 Overall, I really did like and I'm already nearly done with the second one. I would definitely recommend this however, a lot of people have said that J.K. Rowling has unnecessarily longwinded sentences and this book, despite her penname, is very similar. 
 Also, I think I now ship Cormoran and Robin and I don't think that was the point of the book. 
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