In 9th grade, I was introduced to Agatha Christie with the novel And Then There Were None. While I didn’t know it at the time, I was being introduced to a writer that would become my favorite author of all time.

When my book club chose And Then There Were None as their choice for the mystery read, I became really excited because I remembered how much I enjoyed it back in high school. This excitement doubled when I discovered that this would be the first book I would read in my English class, Mystery’s Golden Age.

This story has been cited as one of 100 Greatest American Reads by PBS voters, has shown up on many best mystery novels list, and is book included in many classrooms. However, is it as good as people claim, and I remember?

The answer to that is yes.

What makes this novel is the cast and the plot.

This book follows a group of 10 strangers as they are stuck on an island. As the days go on, more and more of the cast dies following the lines of the poem “Ten Little Soldier Boys.”

I loved how the characters are introduced and how secrets about them are revealed. What makes this even better is that there is no detective, so we just have to work with the main characters, and we only know what they find out.

The only aspect of the novel that I didn’t remember and brought the book down was the grammar and dialogue. Because there are so many characters, there are times when the dialogue between the cast can seem choppy. This is the same with the writing of the internal dialogue of the characters.

Despite this, the story still holds up from the praise 14-year-old me gave. This is a great novel that has a great mystery and cast, and I would definitely recommend this to anyone who has never read an Agatha Christie novel.

Overall, I gave this book a 4/5 stars.