eBook Review - A Maigret Christmas

My fantasy reading funk is getting weird and out of hand. That's not a bad thing as it made me look at stories I bought or have advance reader copies of (physical and ebook) and, because I wanted something fast and outside my comfort zone, this called to me from my kindle folder "NetGalley TBR" (am trying to get myself organised for once!) and went "Ok, let's try this."

In this bind-up, we have three stories. Two novellas and one short story, set around the time of Christmas. The first is the titled story - following Inspector Maigret one Christmas Day when two neighbours come over and say a little girl saw Father Christmas that night. He gave her a doll but was pulling up some floorboards...

The second is Seven Crosses In A Notebook which follows a policeman at a switchboard, looking into as case that could involve his family. The third and final story is The Little Restaurant In Les Ternes (A Christmas Story for Grown Up), which follows two women after they witness a suicide.

Now, I have problems with my reading experience as my eProof only had A Maigret Christmas. And even though, I'm not 100% certain I got the full version - the story ended quite abruptly, hence my uncertainty on whether to write my thoughts and reactions to this. But, am going to talk about my experience with Maigret Christmas and hope that's alright. But am warning you now, am only talking about this one story so take what I say with caution.

I'm not a huge crime reader. I like reading crime but I don't do it as often as I like. So, trying this out ticked some of my boxes. It's crime, it's a translation and people are become aware of this (with thanks to ITV recent adaption of some of the books in the Maigret series). Hence why I tried it.

This is an odd creature as I liked elements of it, and then there were other elements that didn't work for me. I'm quite fickle when it comes to reading crime. I liked the translation work as it didn't feel false. The characters intrigued me.

But - and this is a big but - I found reading this a struggle. Maybe it's because I'm not used to reading this type of mystery, but it was a slog for me to read. I would always be checking the line at the bottom of my kindle, telling me how much I had read and how much more I had to read. I never felt really connected to the story.

But this is my opinion and I only read one story. Who knows? I might try reading Georges Simenon in the future and it would click for me, but this wasn't for me. But if you don't try new things, who will know if you like them or not? So, am glad I tried something new!