It’s really strange, but the reason why I didn’t like 달콤한 살인 계획 all that much is something that happens often and only with Korean novels though I can’t really pinpoint what it is. I would say that my reading experience is a bit similar to 얼굴들 by 이동원, though I did like this one more than 얼굴들.
I found the book well written, the plot was very good, and I really liked how our two protagonists cross paths, how they interact or miss each other. They come from completely different worlds, have very different backgrounds, yet their encounter will have dramatic consequences.
The book having these two interesting protagonists is what allowed me to finish it, even though I never really felt involved in the story. The thing I dislike the most is that, even though we are following a character, the reader is kept in the dark about things the characters know. This can be used as plot device for mystery novels with tricks, but this is not the case here, it’s more a narrative choice. The mystery should come from things the characters do not know, not by artificially hiding things from the reader and revealing them when it’s convenient. This kind of reveal has no impact then, because the character knew it all along, it was just not told yet.
As a result, I found that there was a lot of telling in the novel: when it’s time to reveal things from the past, events are explained and things are told. When this happens too often, I always feel like I’m reading someone telling me about the book rather than the book itself.
And finally, we follow two characters with alternating chapters - which is a structure I usually enjoy - but the problem is that one thread was often chasing the other so we had to go through our police officer finding out things we already know because we read about them in the other thread. It could have been interesting if the second thread would shed another light on known events, but I didn’t find it to be really the case.
I do think the book was good, I’m just trying to understand why I never manage to really care about the story…