Take a photo of a barcode or cover
2.55 AVERAGE
2.55 AVERAGE
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Giving up on this audio book. Although the narrator works really hard to put emotion into the story, there's such a lack to begin with that it seems forced. I was bored for over a half hour of listening. Moving on to something new.
This is such an odd little book and I really wish it had been better.
Prose starts out with a creepy epistolary style narrative that's full of haunted house/haunted island potential. She ramps up the tension as Jack gets more and more stir-crazy, but she ends the book with the worst sort of reader betrayal: oh, it's just in Jack's head, and he had an infection, and now he's in a psych ward, and there's nothing really wrong at the house.
She left too many loose ends--the locked room, the secret glances between Miles and Flora--and gave me the feeling that she was only half-way through the story when her publisher called and told her that the book was due in 24 hours so she'd better just finish it up. I could have used twice as much to really sort through Jack's psyche, the secrets I feel the Dark House had, and some really nice symbolism for teenage insecurity and a complete absence of technology.
This book has a lot of potential, but it really didn't live up to any of it.
Prose starts out with a creepy epistolary style narrative that's full of haunted house/haunted island potential. She ramps up the tension as Jack gets more and more stir-crazy, but she ends the book with the worst sort of reader betrayal: oh, it's just in Jack's head, and he had an infection, and now he's in a psych ward, and there's nothing really wrong at the house.
She left too many loose ends--the locked room, the secret glances between Miles and Flora--and gave me the feeling that she was only half-way through the story when her publisher called and told her that the book was due in 24 hours so she'd better just finish it up. I could have used twice as much to really sort through Jack's psyche, the secrets I feel the Dark House had, and some really nice symbolism for teenage insecurity and a complete absence of technology.
This book has a lot of potential, but it really didn't live up to any of it.
Really exciting premise, conclusion was a let down 🤷
I enjoyed this book. I'm not a critical reader, I just enjoy the story. I love stories told through letters, but it wasn't very believable that that much detail and dialogue would be written in a letter. That being said, this was a fun story! It had a cop-out, cliffhanger ending, so it wasn't a satisfying ending, but would be great as the first book in a series.
Caught my attention, I think mainly because I was listening to it on audio, but I definitely did not like how it ended. The book had a good build up, but seemed to speed up so that it could finish at the end. An easy read, but not exactly my cup of tea.
It took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out this was a modern retelling of The Turn of the Screw. It was ok. I wasn’t a fan of the source material so it’s not surprising I wasn’t a huge fan of this. I feel like journal entries or diary entries would have worked better than a series of letters. Also, teenage angst annoys me. I’m so over that stage of life.
Overall it was an easy “read”. Listened to on audiobook while I worked. Good background.
Overall it was an easy “read”. Listened to on audiobook while I worked. Good background.
I quite liked this one. (It's been a long time since I read THE TURNING OF THE SCREW, but looking it up now, I realize that THE TURNING used a lot more from the original than inspiration, which does kind of lower my appreciation of it. As I felt with Gretchen McNeil's TEN, I would have liked more of a pastiche than such a strict retelling. But with this one, I had forgotten so much of the original that my reading was less influenced.) I thought the modernization of the story was good, and I think the language will be more accessible for younger readers who might be put off by James's classic.
I thought that the atmosphere of this was very creepy and isolating, and I liked getting little snippets of Sophie's letters to show Jack's response to them. For me, one of the hallmarks of a good ghost story is the ambiguity of whether the ghosts are real or a manifestation of an unstable mind (see: THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE), and I felt like it was handled very well here, perhaps because it did ultimately rely so heavily on the original.
I also thought giving Miles and Flora interests that were relevant to their names was cute (travel and botany, respectively). The removal of the sexual overtones of the original was probably smart for a YA, too, and I don't think anything was lost.
Overall, I found this to be a fast and enjoyable read that satisfied my ghost story craving.
I thought that the atmosphere of this was very creepy and isolating, and I liked getting little snippets of Sophie's letters to show Jack's response to them. For me, one of the hallmarks of a good ghost story is the ambiguity of whether the ghosts are real or a manifestation of an unstable mind (see: THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE), and I felt like it was handled very well here, perhaps because it did ultimately rely so heavily on the original.
I also thought giving Miles and Flora interests that were relevant to their names was cute (travel and botany, respectively). The removal of the sexual overtones of the original was probably smart for a YA, too, and I don't think anything was lost.
Overall, I found this to be a fast and enjoyable read that satisfied my ghost story craving.
It was a good book up until the ending, which was very disappointing. The fact that the letters didn't seem to be written by a teenage boy wasn't really bothersome.
mysterious
medium-paced