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3.69 AVERAGE
3.69 AVERAGE
Far too long, and with a tacked on romance to boot, this could have been a fantastic short story about the power cults have over even those who escape, but alas.
3/5
3/5
Mysterious and rambling, like a good walk through the woods. There are ghosts here, but not the ones you expect.
I'm glad I read this- an interesting story of ghosts and mothers and daughters and orphans. It follows two stories here- Ruth who grows up in a foster home with Nate where they are basically there for the money the state provides-and Cora, who has recently realized she is pregnant. The story shifts between the past and present, as these women go on a road trip and as more of the past is revealed. Definitely a gothic tale (I don't know if I would say southern gothic? It's missing some of the weird markers for that genre.) but really interesting and layered. I agree with Bailey that the end wasn't as strong as the rest, and honestly the narrator for Ruth has this weird flat voice for men where she really over-enunciated that bothers me. So maybe don't listen to this on audio.
It's not often a book causes me to tear up because of it's beauty... but this one did. A huge swell of just about every emotion in the last few chapters... and now bookwrecked.
I really enjoyed this strange, looping book. We follow two time lines here, that of Ruth as a seventeen year old orphan girl learning to carry out cons that require people to believe she and her friend Nat can talk to the dead, and then a present storyline where somehow, Ruth no longer talks, but silently leads her niece on a picaresque tour of the Erie Canal. It's very episodic, with a lot of Huck and Jim in the niece's sections, where the ones with the younger Ruth are spooky and dense little hot house dramas. The writing itself takes no prisoners-- lyric and dense, comfortable with withholding relationships and etc for chapters and chapters-- it's a distinctive read where you really do feel like you're in the presence of the otherworldly. And the plotting of this world is intricate enough that you can't catch out Hunt on what's happening too early.
So, in the end, when the plots converge, they don't fully satisfy-- this is partly due, I think, to the fact that the title maybe isn't quite right (or I'm misunderstanding something), though I'm not sure what a better title would be. Like most ghost stories, the journey's a lot scarier than where it ends up. But I still thought this was a lot of fun, and highly recommended if you wanted to see upstate NY in a new light.... It's effectively made gothic here, which I wouldn't have thought possible.
So, in the end, when the plots converge, they don't fully satisfy-- this is partly due, I think, to the fact that the title maybe isn't quite right (or I'm misunderstanding something), though I'm not sure what a better title would be. Like most ghost stories, the journey's a lot scarier than where it ends up. But I still thought this was a lot of fun, and highly recommended if you wanted to see upstate NY in a new light.... It's effectively made gothic here, which I wouldn't have thought possible.
I am not MAD about how this book went or ended, but it also took a VERY LONG TIME. But there is mystery, and groteseque-ness, and fake christians, and a terrible foster care system, and maybe ghosts?!, so it was relatively interesting. I can't help be a little annoyed that *SPOILER* we don't entirely learn how things end. You hope it works out. But I suppose we always hope things work out.
adventurous
emotional
funny
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I couldn't put this book down. No joke. I stayed awake late on a weeknight just to finish it - I felt like I had to.
There were certainly sections of the book that I started to lose interest. The staggered chapters helped with that - one timeline was much more interesting to me than the other, at least until the climax towards the end. And there are holes...a few things that didn't add up. Still, I can't help but rate a book highly when I daydream about it like a newfound crush.
Death, love, life, and how those things affect all of us. Even though the ending is now what I would have expected or wanted, it was bittersweet and lovely.
There were certainly sections of the book that I started to lose interest. The staggered chapters helped with that - one timeline was much more interesting to me than the other, at least until the climax towards the end. And there are holes...a few things that didn't add up. Still, I can't help but rate a book highly when I daydream about it like a newfound crush.
Death, love, life, and how those things affect all of us. Even though the ending is now what I would have expected or wanted, it was bittersweet and lovely.
It took me a while to figure out what sort of story this was going to be, but in the end, I found it a very enjoyable read. It used the tried and true method of alternating timelines to build the plot and reveal to the reader what was going on. While this was not perfectly executed (the "present day" chapters were narrated in first person and the author reveals things in the end that the narrating character would not have known), it was effective in building tension and moving toward a satisfying conclusion. The reader is left with some uncertainty about what was real and what was imagined/assumed, but that, too, was ultimately an effective device.
It was fine. Quite boring and repetitive. Author could have cut out 50% of the book to get the story across. Didn’t want to finish it but did. Don’t recommend.