Reviews with content warning for Dementia - The Gathering

I enjoyed the overall vibe and mystery of this book, but I found the mystery wrap-up in the end to be rushed, a bit underwhelming, and confusing. Barbara was a great main character, and I would definitely read another book about her if there is a sequel. The social commentary was right up my alley, but I can definitely see it being off-putting to some readers.

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jelkebooks's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

I received a galley of this book through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

When this book started off I was very quickly very invested in it. I thought C.J. Tudor just did an incredible job completely transporting you to this small town. The atmosphere was impecable. I also thought the inclusion of vampyres in a premise like this one, was incredibly interesting and really well executed. I was super intrigued to see how this mystery was going to unravel itself, especially because we relatively quickly made a big breakthrough in the case.
However, that being said this book also got stagnant very quickly. After that first breakthrough it takes until the very end for anything else to happen in this book. I did still think the tension with the vampyres was interesting, but ultimately I can only read about how the townspeople really fucking hate the vampyres and want to kill them no matter what a certain amount of times before it gets really repetetive and boring. So even though I was gripped from the start, I did find myself quite bored throughout most of this book.
Then the ending also felt a bit like a bit of letdown. The reveals were really well done, and honestly I didn't even see them all coming. I just feel like they all happened a bit too close to one another as they were packed in like the last 5% of the book. Some resolutions we didn't even get to see happen on page, we're just told about them afterwards. It felt a bit like a let down. And then we also get a little something that could potentially be a teaser for a sequel. I do have interest in that though ... So maybe that will be something to check out. Yeah, in conclusion I thought this book did some things really well but it left me just a bit too bored for me to fully root for it.

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dogearedbooks's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

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