Review: Confessions of a Murder Suspect

Title: Confessions of a Murder Suspect (Teen Detectives #1)

Author: James Patterson, Maxine Paetro

Rating: 3/5

James Patterson returns to the genre that made him famous with a thrilling teen detective series about the mysterious and magnificently wealthy Angel family . . . and the dark secrets they're keeping from one another.

On the night Malcolm and Maud Angel are murdered, Tandy Angel knows just three things: 1) She was the last person to see her parents alive. 2) The police have no suspects besides Tandy and her three siblings. 3) She can't trust anyone—maybe not even herself. Having grown up under Malcolm and Maud's intense perfectionist demands, no child comes away undamaged. Tandy decides that she will have to clear the family name, but digging deeper into her powerful parents' affairs is a dangerous-and revealing-game. Who knows what the Angels are truly capable of?

I read this book not really knowing what to expect. Of course it was going to be a murder mystery novel, due to the title, and that the main character would be a suspect.

I really liked the characters in the novel. They were all so different, not only to each other but to characters in different books. I did, however see a small resemblance between some of these characters and some of the Maximum Ride characters, for example Gazzy(MR)and Hugo(CoaMS) because they were quite similar in not only age but also personality. In fact, the whole family were incredibly similar to Max and the Flock!

Our main protagonist is Tandoori (Tandy) Angel, and she is determined to find out the truth about her parents deaths. The way she speaks to the reader was slightly difficult for me to get used to at first, but as the book progressed I found myself more at ease with the style.

the first thing I noticed when I read it is how out of the ordinary this family really is, and that feeling stayed with me and increased durning the book- and its true, because the Angel family are WERID. However, even though the reader notices this, the children are  oblivious to how different their family is to others, in more ways than they think.

I was a little disappointed, as I figured out the truth little over half way of the novel, but what was good about it was that even though I thought I knew what happened, James kept me on the edge of my seat, making me think-wait, maybe I'm wrong- and so my decision kept changing.

I adored the love interest in this book! It was incredibly refreshing as it was so different. I can't really expand on it that much without spoiling you a little. I would defiantly want to learn some more about him though, as not much is said. 

One of the things I loved the most in this book, was the chapters! They were pretty short, but every so often there were 'Confession' chapters, in which Tandy would say a little but more, more than she was originally letting on as she got closer to the reader. I could usually tell when these chapters were coming and it made me really excited to learn more about Tandy's past. The 'Confession' chapters were probably the easiest, if not the only way to learn about her past and I thought that was very well done. There was always something new to learn!

A down side is the pace of the book. At some points there was a lot going on, but it seemed either everything was happening, or nothing was. I think this book could have defiantly have been cut down by 50, or even more, pages. It was a real shame, the pacing, because it took me so long to read this book- 2 weeks I think. I just couldn't bring myself to finish it. But I must admit, when I sat down and read the last 100 pages or so, time did fly.

The end was left on a cliff-hanger but I don't feel all that inclined to read it which is a shame because I had high hopes for this book. All in all I was expecting better from James Patterson, but I suppose it could have been a lot worse.