I loved Paula Hawkins’s debut novel, The Girl on the Train. It had suspense and intrigue. It had a mystery that revealed itself in layers. The unreliable narrator at the core of the story was fascinating and real. The Blue Hour didn’t have that.

The story begins with a great mystery. A human bone was found in the art exhibit of Vanessa Chapman, a famous artist who has been dead for five years, and now Becker, a fan and curator of her work, must find out whose bone it is and how it got there. The mystery is afoot!

However, this all falls away as Becker travels to the Chapman estate and spends the entirety of the novel reading journals and letters, and speaking with Chapman’s friend, Grace. The novel quickly becomes a slow burn as we learn about Vanessa’s life, including who she loved and fucked over in life, on her way to the top.

The novel is well written. The characters felt real enough. The setup was intriguing. The ending portion of the novel where everything was revealed felt wonderfully put together, even though the ending left much to be desired. It’s the middle–this slow burn–that really brought the story down for me.

Though the characters felt real, they aren’t interesting enough for me to want to walk down memory lane. Though there’s a mystery, there’s no suspense or detective work. What we have is a crime drama. Let the story unfold as you sip your tea, because you won’t be doing much else.

I do have to note that Gemma Whelan, the narrator, did an absolutely fantastic job of bringing all the characters, with their varied accents, to life.