DNF

DNF's premise immediately grabbed me. A reader posts that she DNF’d a book…and by the next morning she’s dead. Then another reader dies. And another. As someone who reads and reviews a ridiculous number of books, that setup was creepy in the best possible way. Suddenly leaving a bad review feels a little more dangerous.

Unfortunately, the idea ended up being stronger than the execution for me.

It’s a very quick read, and there were definitely moments that kept me curious enough to keep going. I wanted to know who was behind everything and why these readers were being targeted. But the writing style and format didn’t completely work for me. It became repetitive in places, and I wanted more depth, more tension, and honestly a little more darkness from such a deliciously twisted premise.

The mystery was entertaining, but I never got that truly unsettled, "I need to know what happens next" feeling I want from a thriller. There were opportunities here to make this seriously creepy, especially with the whole author/reviewer/online book community angle, but it stayed a little too surface-level for me.

Still, I have to give credit where it’s due—the concept is clever, different, and slightly terrifying for those of us who regularly announce to the internet exactly what we think about books.

Not a DNF for me…but not quite a page-turner either.

I wanted to love this one much more than I actually did.

DNF's premise immediately grabbed me. A reader posts that she DNF’d a book…and by the next morning she’s dead. Then another reader dies. And another. As someone who reads and reviews a ridiculous number of books, that setup was creepy in the best possible way. Suddenly leaving a bad review feels a little more dangerous.

Unfortunately, the idea ended up being stronger than the execution for me.

It’s a very quick read, and there were definitely moments that kept me curious enough to keep going. I wanted to know who was behind everything and why these readers were being targeted. But the writing style and format didn’t completely work for me. It became repetitive in places, and I wanted more depth, more tension, and honestly a little more darkness from such a deliciously twisted premise.

The mystery was entertaining, but I never got that truly unsettled, "I need to know what happens next" feeling I want from a thriller. There were opportunities here to make this seriously creepy, especially with the whole author/reviewer/online book community angle, but it stayed a little too surface-level for me.

Still, I have to give credit where it’s due—the concept is clever, different, and slightly terrifying for those of us who regularly announce to the internet exactly what we think about books.

Not a DNF for me…but not quite a page-turner either.