Early Reader Review: The Christie Affair by Nina de Gramont

Source: From Netgalley and the Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This in no way alters my opinion or review.

The Christie Affair by Nina de Gramont 

Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Publication Date:  February 1, 2022

 

Format: Audiobook ARC


Rating: DNF at 50%

Goodreads Synopsis: 

Nina de Gramont's The Christie Affair is a beguiling novel of star-crossed lovers, heartbreak, revenge, and murder—and a brilliant re-imagination of one of the most talked-about unsolved mysteries of the twentieth century.

Every story has its secrets.

Every mystery has its motives.

“A long time ago, in another country, I nearly killed a woman. It’s a particular feeling, the urge to murder. It takes over your body so completely, it’s like a divine force, grabbing hold of your will, your limbs, your psyche. There’s a joy to it. In retrospect, it’s frightening, but I daresay in the moment it feels sweet. The way justice feels sweet.”

The greatest mystery wasn’t Agatha Christie’s disappearance in those eleven infamous days, it’s what she discovered.

London, 1925: In a world of townhomes and tennis matches, socialites and shooting parties, Miss Nan O’Dea became Archie Christie’s mistress, luring him away from his devoted and well-known wife, Agatha Christie.

The question is, why? Why destroy another woman’s marriage, why hatch a plot years in the making, and why murder? How was Nan O’Dea so intricately tied to those eleven mysterious days that Agatha Christie went missing?

Review: 

Trigger Warnings: Adultery, infant death, sexual abuse

Even after reading the synopsis for this book, it was not what I expected. I love reading Agatha Christie mysteries, I have been reading them for many years and I guess I thought that this book would be both more about Agatha but also more in line with a Christie mystery. It sadly was not.

This book follows Nan, the mistress who steals Agatha Christie's husband away from her thus leading to her disappearance. Much of the book is about Nan and her life leading up to the affair and the disappearance. However, even weirder is that it is told from Nan as an omnipotent narrator... so she 'knows' what happened as she was doing her thing, to Agatha, and the husband, and the police etc. I found the way that the story was told to be off-putting. 

I made it to the 50% mark in the audiobook, so I gave it a real try, but the story was not enough to keep me into it, and I really didn't care about Nan at all either. I think that one of the biggest downfalls of this book is that 'it is about Agatha's disappearance' but really it isn't it is a story about a sad mistress and her life leading up to adultery and Agatha is collateral damage.  I think that the author is alienating her audience from the beginning in this sense. I came for a story about Agatha and where she went and what she did during her time away, not a story about the woman that made her life difficult. As a fan of Agatha Christie, I had strong negative feelings for Nan from the beginning and as she tries to justify her decisions to allow a man to cheat it only made me dislike her even more.

This was one of my most anticipated books this year and I really wanted to love it, sadly that was just not the case. This story might make a miraculous turn at the very end, much like the Agatha Christie mysteries I know and love, but I didn't have it in me to make it as it was currently moving along.