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3.48 AVERAGE
3.48 AVERAGE
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Content Warnings
Moderate: Mental illness, Suicide
Oddly bland writing that, on later reflection, maybe meant as a meta reference to some writings mentioned in the book. The story itself is pretty paint by numbers but the concepts introduced in the last few chapters have haunted me fore the past few weeks.
THE GHOST NOTEBOOKS is a book from my backlist of Netgalley books. I chose to listen to it via Libby. I love the cover and the title is so interesting! However, I felt this book promised more of a ghost story but didn’t really deliver.
Told from Nick’s perspective, his fiancée, Hannah, takes a new job as the director of the Wright Historic House. Things soon start feeling off when Hannah is having trouble sleeping. She is obsessed with reading files she has found around the house but she won’t talk to Nick about it. Then, one morning, Hannah is gone. What happened to Hannah?
I think where I first struggled is this book being in Nick’s POV. I did not like Nick from the start and I would have much preferred at least some parts told from Hannah’s perspective. The pacing was off and the there was a lot of writing that did not flow together. I was really looking forward to a haunted house story and this just fell flat.
This book was a quick read, so it gets an extra star for that. It could have dwelled on boring mood and setting, which may have made the book better now that I think of it, but the story moves at a comfortably quick pace. It’s also a short book.
I read the story as an allegory for millennial existentialism, and not primarily as a haunted house / ghost story. It’s about the fears of adulthood and aging. The most disturbing part of the story is that a ghost can fast forward your life, showing you the mundanity and uncomfortableness and loneliness of being old and infirm far into your future. That’s all existentialist anxiety right there.
The book is about dealing with things like that. Growing up, having job insecurity, having relationship problems, getting married, dealing with aging parents who still treat your adult self as a kid, dealing with the death of loved ones and grief, guilt, and getting older and then old and then dead.
I read the story as an allegory for millennial existentialism, and not primarily as a haunted house / ghost story. It’s about the fears of adulthood and aging. The most disturbing part of the story is that a ghost can fast forward your life, showing you the mundanity and uncomfortableness and loneliness of being old and infirm far into your future. That’s all existentialist anxiety right there.
The book is about dealing with things like that. Growing up, having job insecurity, having relationship problems, getting married, dealing with aging parents who still treat your adult self as a kid, dealing with the death of loved ones and grief, guilt, and getting older and then old and then dead.
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Neat little story. I liked it, and, at 230ish pages, it's a good one to recommend!
k
k
Why is this not more popular? I could see this turning into a movie. Kind of reminded me of Celeste Ng's Little Fires Everywhere but maybe I'm too literal.
This was a fun mystery/thriller to read. It switches between the present and then journal entries from the past. There was a great twist at the end that I didn’t see coming.
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
I wanted to like this mystery, but I ultimately didn’t really feel attached to the narrator, and finished it more out of curiosity about the craft of how the author would close out the novel than the actual story. Not for me. Should have DNF’d.
"Your own life is terrifying, but life is an unending astonishment."
I loved this book. I loved the rawness of it, despite the almost eye roll approach to ghost and spirits and a house that's almost alive. It was my kind of creepy, my kind of angst. I was on edge and kept fascinated, and I especially loved the interludes of pieces of Wright's writings and parts of Hannah's journal and teaching hints. It's cool when a book like this comes together in the end, when you didn't see ahead of time all the ways it could, and I'm glad I was kept on edge til the end.
I loved this book. I loved the rawness of it, despite the almost eye roll approach to ghost and spirits and a house that's almost alive. It was my kind of creepy, my kind of angst. I was on edge and kept fascinated, and I especially loved the interludes of pieces of Wright's writings and parts of Hannah's journal and teaching hints. It's cool when a book like this comes together in the end, when you didn't see ahead of time all the ways it could, and I'm glad I was kept on edge til the end.