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3.54 AVERAGE
3.54 AVERAGE
Absolutely fantastic. Very different in a lot of ways from the girl with all the gifts, though the empathetic main character who has an odd relationship with a child was not a wholly unfamiliar character turn from Carey. The ending is just superb. Unexpected, thrilling, and quite satisfying.
adventurous
dark
emotional
medium-paced
My friends are going to laugh, because I seem to give all books 3 stars, but it's because I have a hard time objectively rating books. #1, because I'm always in awe of anyone who's written a book and #2, because I feel bad that someone's given so much time and energy, who am I to rate it badly?
But, in this case, this book really is a solid 3. After "The girl with all the gifts", I truly expected to be blown away. This book kind of rocked me in a mild wind. The beginning seemed promsing. Jess Moulson, a heroin addict, is in jail for starting a fire that killed the ten year old boy, Alex, who lived upstairs from her in her apartment building, while she was high. We follow her from the hospital, where she is recovering from life threatening burns, to Fellside, a women's prison, to begin her sentence. She has a hard time adjusting, as I could imagine anyone would, until the "ghost" of Alex shows up to keep her company. I have to put ghost in quotations. If you read the book, you'll understand.
I kept waiting for a big reveal, a big reason that all of this was happening. To me, when that big "reveal" happened, I was disappointed. The ending disappointed me. It left me feeling vaguely dissatisfied. Although I really appreciate Carey's writing, this book did not do it for me.
But, in this case, this book really is a solid 3. After "The girl with all the gifts", I truly expected to be blown away. This book kind of rocked me in a mild wind. The beginning seemed promsing. Jess Moulson, a heroin addict, is in jail for starting a fire that killed the ten year old boy, Alex, who lived upstairs from her in her apartment building, while she was high. We follow her from the hospital, where she is recovering from life threatening burns, to Fellside, a women's prison, to begin her sentence. She has a hard time adjusting, as I could imagine anyone would, until the "ghost" of Alex shows up to keep her company. I have to put ghost in quotations. If you read the book, you'll understand.
I kept waiting for a big reveal, a big reason that all of this was happening. To me, when that big "reveal" happened, I was disappointed. The ending disappointed me. It left me feeling vaguely dissatisfied. Although I really appreciate Carey's writing, this book did not do it for me.
challenging
dark
emotional
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
medium-paced
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
For some weird reason, this book read like Carey had written it before "The Girl with All the Gifts." It is overly long, tedious and often just plain boring. I almost gave up on it a few times, but I plowed through to the end.
I received an eARC of Fellside via NetGalley, which is probably the only reason I finished reading it. I don’t like DNFing ARCs because I worry that my unfavourable review will then be inaccurate.
So I persisted, but just to give you an idea: it took me more than a month to complete this book. By comparison, I have completed much longer books in a span of three days.
Carey’s writing is concise and not at all hard to read. I quite like his vocabulary too, because it is not overly simplistic and it does its fair share to broaden my own vocabulary.
However, there was nothing unique about the premise of Fellside. Female prisons have been done and done again. Corruption in prisons? Done. Framing the wrong person for a murder? Done. Spooky hauntings and conversations with the dead? Done. Spooky hauntings within the walls of a women’s prison? Done. Court dramas? Done.
Carey mashed all of these things together and still managed to come up with something that was wholly unsatisfying, and unoriginal. Not one of the concepts – legal drama, prison drama, not paranormal drama – was executed with sufficient finesse to be memorable; resulting in a book that really wasn’t sure what it was, or where it was going.
None of the characters truly had any agency – yes, even Jess’s two big decisions were really not made of own accord. Nor did any character truly experience any growth. Maybe one or two of them displayed some real regression, but certainly not enough attention was paid to that pattern to become of any consequence in the plot.
As for the conclusion? What a cop-out. It was too cut-and-dried, too perfectly-imperfect.
Fellside is unfortunately best forgotten, which would not sting so much if not for the fact that I know what a good author Carey can be – The Girl With All The Gifts having been such a feat of plotting and characterisation.
So I persisted, but just to give you an idea: it took me more than a month to complete this book. By comparison, I have completed much longer books in a span of three days.
Carey’s writing is concise and not at all hard to read. I quite like his vocabulary too, because it is not overly simplistic and it does its fair share to broaden my own vocabulary.
However, there was nothing unique about the premise of Fellside. Female prisons have been done and done again. Corruption in prisons? Done. Framing the wrong person for a murder? Done. Spooky hauntings and conversations with the dead? Done. Spooky hauntings within the walls of a women’s prison? Done. Court dramas? Done.
Carey mashed all of these things together and still managed to come up with something that was wholly unsatisfying, and unoriginal. Not one of the concepts – legal drama, prison drama, not paranormal drama – was executed with sufficient finesse to be memorable; resulting in a book that really wasn’t sure what it was, or where it was going.
None of the characters truly had any agency – yes, even Jess’s two big decisions were really not made of own accord. Nor did any character truly experience any growth. Maybe one or two of them displayed some real regression, but certainly not enough attention was paid to that pattern to become of any consequence in the plot.
As for the conclusion? What a cop-out. It was too cut-and-dried, too perfectly-imperfect.
Fellside is unfortunately best forgotten, which would not sting so much if not for the fact that I know what a good author Carey can be – The Girl With All The Gifts having been such a feat of plotting and characterisation.
3.5/5
It took a DAMN long time for this book to rev up, and I still find it disappointing, but once it realized what it wanted to be it got pretty decent. Confusing, but decent.
It took a DAMN long time for this book to rev up, and I still find it disappointing, but once it realized what it wanted to be it got pretty decent. Confusing, but decent.