Suicide Club

Our Review

Suicide Club by Rachel Heng should have been my kind of book on the face of it but unfortunately it ended up being a big disappointment. I don’t like to give up on a book and normally try to make it to at least 20% before deciding not to continue reading but this book was just not enjoyable.

I only made it to 9% of Suicide Club because despite it’s interesting premise it just didn’t translate into something I would want to read.

Ok, so good points about Suicide Club. Well the first one is the cover of the book is beautiful and definitely contributed to my decision to request an advanced copy for review. It isn’t your run of the mill book cover. Despite dystopian novels being among my favours I do find they have a tendency to be more hit and miss than other genres, so I may not have requested it without the cover.

Secondly, the prelude of Suicide Club is incredibly promising and if the book had continued like that then I would have continued to read it and probably enjoyed it much more.

“The man stood in a windowless room. He wore a tuxedo, black as coal, cut sharply against the cliffs of his shoulders. The room was empty, except for the glass bottle and box of matches at his feet.”

The man in question is videoing himself and sending it out to everyone, some of whom will ignore it, but a lot will watch what unfolds next.

“They would have heard him explain the reasons for what he was about to do, how long and hard he’d deliberated before coming to this decision. Why he did not want to live another two hundred years.”

In a world where immortality is possible what do you do when you want to die?

“Something has to change. In being robbed of our deaths, we are robbed of our lives.”

One of the major problems of the Suicide Club for me was the lack of interesting characters. Lea the main character was a bit lacklustre and vacuous.

Lea was part of the system working towards being alive longer when one day she steps into oncoming traffic in pursuit of a man she believes is her estranged father. Unfortunately, this incident ends with her in hospital and brings her to the attention of the Ministry.

For me the ‘Ministry’ and ‘Observation List’ were both a bit generic and seemed to be a bit underwhelming.

The small amount I read of Anja’s story seemed more promising but not enough to make up for how dull I found Lea.

The main problem is that I just found it a bit boring.

Our Final Rating...

Tue, 15th May 2018