"Gorgeous and relatable poems! "

"While I really enjoyed the spooky and thrilling atmosphere of this read, I did not enjoy the ending. It’s interesting how divided the reviews I’ve read of this are. I don’t mind an open-ended conclusion that allows the reader to make their own assumptions and hypotheses, but this just felt too incomplete for me. One thing that I feel many of the readers of this book can agree upon is that it needed to be much longer and fleshed out. A quick read is only a valuable experience if done right. This was too short to amount to its full potential. I really enjoyed the characters, but I didn’t get to experience them in their fullness."

"March cannot come soon enough, the stakes of twice as many tributes let's gooo"

"This was my first-ever Janice Hallett read, and now I am *hooked*!

I borrowed 'The Examiner' from my library, purely because one of my mutuals recommended it as a fab read; but I went in knowing *nothing* about it - and was very surprised to discover it to be an epistolary novel taking place within a Master of Arts (MA) program with six students whose marks are being cross-examined for fairness ... the epistolary nature comes out in the form of the University's intranet message-boards and chat function, student submissions, email exchanges, 'Doodle' diary-entry for purposes of a final long essay ...

Speaking as a lecturer of Creative Writing at RMIT University in Melbourne, can I just say this aspect of the novel was purely non-fiction. Hand-on-heart, the petty narcissism and rivalries, the disparity of life-experiences amongst the students - all of that which is teased out so beautifully in the online conversations and allusions/recounting of classroom sessions was DEAD. ON. and gave me heart-palpitations from the beginning. Placing it in a University Arts setting was incredibly clever - what fertile ground for rivalries and one-upmanship, insecurities and misinterpreted symbolism.

Hallett weaves an Agatha Christie-style murder-mystery within this MA program and cleverly uses the epistolary device to amp up unreliable narrators, play around with reader assumptions, highlight pitch-perfect code-switching depending on who is corresponding ... the *tones* she brings out, were brilliant. This is a masterclass in ~voice~ and making sure characters sound distinct and unique. I also *loved* a particular twist that came toward the end, that had me wanting to go back and re-read straight away to pick up on all the context clues I missed!

This also reminded me of the brilliant British TV series crossed with aforementioned modern Christie, and I absolutely gobbled it up!

Because it's epistolary, the 460-pages absolutely fly by - and now I find myself heading back to the library to borrow every book of hers I can get my hands on!

P.S. - do read her 'Acknowledgements' page at the back, but not until you've finished the book (lest you be spoiled) but the genesis and thinking behind this story is fascinating in itself!"