Reviews with content warning for Child death - La riada

I've always been a big fan of other things it somewhat reminds me of at times— two of them being VC Andrews' spooky family epics which tended to be comprised of five books trailing different members of the families, only this contains more of a spelt creeping horror slant; as well as Dark Shadows at times, like someone else mentioned, with its plodding plot rolled around this family.

In this novel (novella?), we get a TON of character development, and some expectations have been set as far as the pacing. While there's only a handful of spooky things that happen in it, they're all relatively impactful. So far everything can just about be reasoned away, aside from a particular happening in one of the houses. Some of the characters seem to have a bit of a catching doubt about Elinor, or they realize something is just a bit off, but things are ramping up slowly enough that she doesn't necessarily draw undue attention. Very interested in seeing where the other five books take me.

I don't often choose to read things that are this long, my reading statistics on Storygraph tend to lean more towards middle sized books, with the most typical being around 300-400 pages, but I specifically picked this one out due to its length— as a whole, obviously, I think the six novels combined makes for something between 800-900 pages. But I was so enthralled with McDowell's writing, and I had glanced over this before choosing The Elementals, that I couldn't stop myself from picking it up immediately.

Content Warnings

ysra's review against another edition

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mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

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