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3.37 AVERAGE
3.37 AVERAGE
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
I'm usually not a huge fan of shifting perspectives so the time period jumps weren't my favorite and I felt like the 1893 story got a little muddled with some characters idk.
adventurous
mysterious
tense
A paranormal western. I find I prefer Crouch's recent sci-fi reads more.
adventurous
dark
mysterious
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
emotional
mysterious
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
“I wonder if this book is ever going to get interesting?” That’s a question I asked myself for the first 60% or so of this book.
“Lazy” is the best word I could use to describe the author’s writing style. A lot of tropes you can easily rattle off the top of your head are inside the pages. And the “foreshadowing” at the beginning of the book was so extremely blatant that I could do nothing else but hope they were all red herrings to deflect from the ensuing plot twist. Unfortunately, I hoped in vain.
One of the things that put me off the most was how clearly it is evident that the author is a man, writing a woman as his main character. At one point, someone is literally threatening the MC with torture and death and she thinks to herself that she could envision herself being attracted to him in any other setting.
She also mourns some injuries that happen to her feet, whining to herself - “Abigail loved her feet - small, feminine, exuding a slender, proportionate beauty her friends openly envied.” I don’t know about you, girls, but I always have conversations amongst friends about who has the most beautiful, feminine feet between us.
It definitely gives the idea that this man has never had a fleshed out whole conversation with a woman in his life.
This book has big focus on veteran’s and their mental health post-combat. Suicide rates among veterans is a major, very prominent issue in the real world. In this book, PTSD and suicide attempts among veterans is absolutely nothing more than a shabby and clumsy plot device. It’s honestly embarrassing and shameful.
The book describes veterans as unhinged, extremely over-the-top violent, cold, and completely unfeeling. It doesn’t offer a sympathetic view into the world of PTSD or post-combat coping methods. It simply villainizes veterans and creates a miopic, singular lens with which to view them as a whole.
I also really didn’t enjoy in the “1893” chapters that the book constantly refers to Indigenous peoples as “heathens” and “injuns” and simply “Indians”. Regardless of the time period setting, I found every instance uselessly irrelevant and distasteful, to say the least.
This author presents this book as a supernatural, spooky tale about a “ghost town” and there is basically nothing supernatural about this book, which was a huge disappointment to me, as that was exactly what I was looking for.
The “plot twist”, if you can call it that, is more of an explanation of events, and quite honestly was predictable long before it was explained.
The mystery element of this book was definitely there; there were plenty of questions to be answered. Unfortunately, many of them had obvious answers that fell flat when written out.
The characters are completely detached and hollow with a complete lack of character development or growth of any kind. There is a very feeble and clumsy attempt to build a subplot about Abigail’s relationship with her father but it is so uninteresting and tepid that any resolution that comes is almost boring.
The only moment in the book that resonated with me emotionally at all was Lana’s story arch, and truthfully she was only used as a plot device so her story doesn’t even get any kind of pay off she deserves.
I kept reading this book in the hopes that a major twist was coming that would upset all my disappointment and disinterest with the first three-quarters of the book. Unfortunately, the pay off just wasn’t enough.
If you want to read a mystery, sure this will fill the hours, but don’t expect any emotional investment in the characters nor any of the alleged supernatural elements.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Child death, Confinement, Death, Domestic abuse, Gore, Gun violence, Racial slurs, Racism, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Blood, Medical content, Kidnapping, Medical trauma, Murder, Alcohol, Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Alcoholism, Child abuse, Cursing, Mental illness, Misogyny, Physical abuse
Minor: Animal death, Miscarriage, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Cannibalism, Colonisation
adventurous
dark
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
dark
emotional
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
N/A
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Thrilling, exciting, and a little spooky. At first I thought it really was going to be a ghost story. But it evolved into something better; terrible. The hopping back and forth between time was masterful, in particular, lacing together loss and experiences that were shared 100s of years apart. The characters and their actions depicted the raw human nature and how it remains unchanged even after civilization has taken root.