SYNOPSIS
It's time to solve the murder of the century...
Forty years ago, Steven Smith found a copy of a famous children's book by disgraced author Edith Twyford, its margins full of strange markings and annotations. Wanting to know more, he took it to his English teacher Miss Iles, not realising the chain of events that he was setting in motion. Miss Iles became convinced that the book was the key to solving a puzzle, and that a message in secret code ran through all Twyford's novels. Then Miss Iles disappeared on a class field trip, and Steven has no memory of what happened to her.
Now, out of prison after a long stretch, Steven decides to investigate the mystery that has haunted him for decades. Was Miss Iles murdered? Was she deluded? Or was she right about the code? And is it still in use today?
Desperate to recover his memories and find out what really happened to Miss Iles, Steven revisits the people and places of his childhood. But it soon becomes clear that Edith Twyford wasn't just a writer of forgotten children's stories. The Twyford Code has great power, and he isn't the only one trying to solve it.
Title: The Twyford Code
Author: Janice Hallet
Publisher: Viper
Publication date: January 13, 2022
REVIEW
RATING: ⭐⭐
The Twyford Code was one of my most anticipated books this month. I have a copy of The Appeal (haven’t read it yet) and I had been reading awesome reviews about it so, when I was approved for an eARC of The Twyford Code I was ecstatic. Sadly, it wasn’t for me.
First of all I would like to commend the author on the originality of her book. Told entirely through audio files transcripts, I can only imagine the tremendous amount of hard work that writing it must have implied. But it was precisely this format what made me not to connect with the story at all.
I’m sure me not being a native English speaker was in part to blame. We are told from the start these are transcripts so many words are misspelled or written as they would sound in audio. Some times it took quite a bit of time to find out what they were supposed to really mean. Add the use of slang, word play and double entendres and I’m sure many of those just flew over my head.
The format made it also quite difficult for me to empathize with any of the characters, as it did not truly lead to any kind of development on most of them. The story kept jumping back and forth between the present and the narrator’s recollections from his past that didn’t have any real impact in the story until the very end.
I found the mystery itself slow moving and hard to follow sometimes once again due to the book’s format. Although as I got used to it it got a little bit easier to read I was never truly comfortable with it.
The ending caught me completely unaware. It was surprising but it also felt just like an explanation for all of us not bright enough to catch all the hidden clues.
Although this was not for me, I’m sure The Twyford Code will be a big hit and I have to admire the author for being able to craft such an original story.
Thanks to NetGalley and Viper Books for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review.
P.S: I just adore that cover!
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