The Honourable Thief by Meaghan Wilson Anastasios

DNF’D AT 30%

Genre: Historical Fiction
Author: Meaghan Wilson Anastasios
Published: July 2018
Publiser: Pan Macmillan
Pages: 448 {paperback}

Thanks to Pan Macmillan for sending me a copy of this in exchange for an honest review

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Why I DNF’d

I feel bad. I really do. I wanted to love this book so much – I loved The Water Diviner that Anastasios co-wrote with her husband and thought this would be an epic read. But alas, after struggling to make progress for what felt like weeks (but in reality was just 5 days) I’ve decided to throw in the towel.

The setting was almost interesting. But I guess I was hoping to fall more in love with Istanbul like I fell in love with the setting of The Water Diviner, but for the first 3rd of the book we’re almost exclusively in Greece. Or a pub in Istanbul.

But I think what really caused me to put this down was that I did not like the protagonist – which surprised me because this so rarely happens. But Ben was a grumpy, sloppy, fame-addicted man who wanted sex and money so badly. I just couldn’t believe in his true passion for finding Achilles and I wasn’t sure if the book was really about archeology or about his mental health. I was confused and repulsed by him.

Which is very harsh, I do apologise. But try as I might I just could not bring myself to re-kindle my interest and trudge onwards. So for the sake of not spending actual weeks ploughing through the rest of this and sitting on an unhappy 2 or 3 stars, I’m setting it aside and cutting my losses.

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On the Other Hand

This book is very well written. I had to have a dictionary handy with, true, as the vocabulary used is certainly not your every day choice of words. But it is written well. I also have seen many good reviews on Goodreads for this book so I will say that if you’re interested by this book, give it a go. I think I’m sitting on an unpopular opinion and whilst I’m not sure it’ll blow your socks off, I do think there’s a nice amount of historical fiction in this to be enjoyed.

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~~ Kirstie ~~

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