First of all. I’d like to thank Netgalley and the publisher for giving me a free e-ARC of Those Opulent Days. 

 

All four men have come for a spectacular evening of indulgence at a home perched on a hill near Dalat, but only one of them will make it through the night. An complicated web of horror, loyalty, and well-kept secrets begins to unravel as the story alternates between this deadly night and the six days preceding up to it, as told from the perspectives of the four men, their mothers, their servants, and their lovers. The real antagonist starts to show as the murder gets closer to the scene and more characters are considered suspects: colonialism, the French occupation of Vietnam, and the stark economic disparities that push the rich into the stratosphere while the underprivileged go hungry on the streets. 

 

This book had every chance to be good, but it was just not executed well. I don’t know if it’s just because I don’t like historical fiction, but isn’t a mystery supposed to hook you? That wasn’t the case here as I had to force myself to pick this up. I must admit, it had lovely prose, and we can relate this to the current situation in Palestine. For that sole reason, I do appreciate this book. 

 

For me, the writing of the characters was too vague or it felt like the author didn’t know the characters at all. They felt so similar to each other to the point that I wasn’t even bothered to differentiate them.