I Have Some Questions for You: A Novel

The riveting new novel — "part true-crime page-turner, part campus coming-of-age"— from the author of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist The Great Believers. A stirring investigation into collective memory and a deeply felt examination of one woman’s reckoning with her past, with a transfixing mystery at its heart. I Have Some Questions for You is at once a compulsive page-turner and a literary triumph.

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464 pages

Average rating: 6.52

436 RATINGS

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9 REVIEWS

Community Reviews

fionaian
Sep 30, 2024
4/10 stars
I wanted to like this book because I loved Makkai’s other work, “The Great Believers.” But it was too dense with no true progression on the case at hand. I wish we actually heard from the accused’s perspective, along with the victim’s. This book could have been 200 pages shorter.
Very Lit
Aug 28, 2024
4/10 stars
So wish this story line stayed on point. The author spent too much time with vague suggestions, and comments on social justice that it left the readers searching for a crime scene, a clear motive, and a resolution. A sloppy mess that could have been so much better.
SonM
Jul 12, 2024
7/10 stars
Started a bit slow. Good themes appear in the second half of the book.
Anonymous
Mar 23, 2024
8/10 stars
4.25 stars!

I honestly loved this book. I found it a perfect blend of both a murder mystery, which I love, and character development, which I love more. It was a little long and I was worried that it would drag, and sure, maybe it could have been cut a bit, but honestly, I'm not complaining because I really enjoyed this novel the entire way through. The author touched on a ton of issues and female rage at how women are treated in society and how men get away with shit just because they are men was palpable in every word and line, and I love it.

A lot of people have said that they found the main character annoying and whiny, but I never felt like that at all, and I have a very low tolerance for annoying and whiny main characters. I thought her exploration of herself as she had been in high school and examination of her prejudices and beliefs was really interesting to follow, and I enjoyed hearing from her point of view throughout the book.

I also love a dark academia plot and this was that just by virtue of being set on a boarding school campus. I didn't go to a boarding school, but my school was also fairly small and isolated (and also I did a lot of theatre), so it brought me back to my high school days as well. (As well as the fact that our drama teacher was arrested our senior year for sleeping with a student, so things were a bit too familiar at times.)

Some people complained about the fact that after everything that happened, nothing was fully resolved and everything ended up really in the same place at the beginning, but hard disagree from me. A lot more people were now aware of the truth and fighting for justice by the end of the book. The main character had become a lot more self-aware and was a lot happier and more comfortable in her own skin. There was some more movement on understanding what happened when the time was committed, and other students came out with the truth about things they had been hiding all those years. Sure, it wasn't a happily ever after where everything was perfectly resolved, but that's just not reality, and I thought the ending worked really well. Sometimes a bittersweet ending is perfect.

Finally, this book reminded me how much I hate SJW so much. Everyone needs to touch some grass. c:
Writer13
Jan 07, 2024
2/10 stars
**review coming soon**

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