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lookaclara's review
2.0
I loved the premise, I was intrigued by the setting and characters. the first chapter was perfect! I was eager for a book where we couldnt trust anyone and followed the protoganist as she tried to figure out this new "life" of hers. I had many guesses as to what was happening, including various myths and fairy tales (like Persephone and Hades, Orpheus and Eurydice, Bluebeard) which I suppose may have acted as inspiration for the author.... the first half of the book kept me on my toes and eager for the big reveal.
however it never came. plot points were picked up and quickly dropped again, never to be mentioned and creating a generally confusing atmosphere. plus, I was a bit annoyed by the writing style (although there were some nicely written passages, it often became clumsy and repetitive, in the wrong ways). that, and the unsatisfying ending and lack of clear answers brings this down to a 2. I wanted to love this book and I did devour it, but it let me down. I'm not sure if I'll continue this series.
however it never came. plot points were picked up and quickly dropped again, never to be mentioned and creating a generally confusing atmosphere. plus, I was a bit annoyed by the writing style (although there were some nicely written passages, it often became clumsy and repetitive, in the wrong ways). that, and the unsatisfying ending and lack of clear answers brings this down to a 2. I wanted to love this book and I did devour it, but it let me down. I'm not sure if I'll continue this series.
aprileclecticbookworm's review
2.0
I struggled to keep interest in this because after the first 1/3 it was still like a creepy dream sequence that we just weren't waking up from. I'm glad I finished but I'm on the fence about the next one. It might just pull the series from the 2.5 I gave this one to 4 or 5 stars. I generally enjoy a bit of creepy and disturbing and it had plenty of that but was somehow a little boring at the same time.
momjai's review
3.0
I love the premise of the book, but it fell short of my hopes for it. I'm still confused as to whether this is young adult, new adult, or whatever adult. It definitely read like a young adult novel, but it had an adult price point. I just felt like it was definitely lacking. That said, I'll most likely read them all, cuz that's how I roll.
bookadventurer's review
3.0
Unwept is the first part of what appears to be a serialized novel (how I hate those! But I’ll come back to that). It begins with a young woman coming to herself on a train. She remembers nothing of her life before the nightmare she has just awoken from, and knows nothing about her current situation or herself, except that she is called Ellis. Ellis is on her way to Gamin, a small coastal town where she is told she will recuperate from the incident that caused her amnesia.
Upon arriving in Gamin, Ellis meets people who seem to know her well, who supposedly she once knew. Her cousin Jenny, her friend Alicia, and the unsettling Merrick among them. She never really settles in, keeps longing for some place that is more “home” than this strange town where the young people seem slightly off, the dishes and the victrolas appear and disappear seemingly without human intervention, and there are no children.
Ellis spends nearly the whole mini-novel discovering what makes Gamin strange, so I won’t give any of it away here. I will say I found the premise odd, unusual, and without much purpose. I am not sure what the novel is really about, in the end. Simply a young woman’s strange journey? An ancient tale of gods, mortals, and the battle between heaven and hell? Mortality? Other questions I wrangled with: what kind of people are the Gamin inhabitants? What does the baby on the train have to do with anything? Who are the Disir sisters? Where did she meet the man in her nightmares? How do the "outsiders" get to Gamin?
So, it was confusing. When I thought I was driving through regular corn fields, the story veered left into a crop circle, a totally unexpected direction that caught me off guard.
The main character was a little dumb about the people she meets in Gamin. It appears she has all this scientific knowledge, particularly about anatomy (where did that come from?), but when it comes to discovering who is the “bad guy” and who is the “good guy,” she makes the wrong decision, even though it should be blatantly obvious to the reader, and there were signs ALL OVER the place that should have indicated to her who she should trust and who was the monster.
I heartily dislike serial novels. The brevity interrupts the story at the edge of a cliff, makes the story too short to really get deeply involved in, and it requires me to wait for the resolution, at least once, possibly twice, depending on how many installments are written. And I wonder how it affects the writing - even Charles Dickens’ stories were inflated, bloated, and drawn out. This new trend irks me so much I am going to find out the causes, interests, motivations, and extent of this new serial novel trend in publishing. Look out for a post soon on why we're all suffering from serial novels right now.
Even with all its strangeness and brevity, I really enjoyed this piece and couldn’t put it down till I’d finished it (not challenging, given that my e-reader counted only 177 pages). The strangeness and the mystery kept me turning pages. For that reason, and because I'm conflicted about this portion of a novel, I give this a mediocre rating of "beach vacation." I may read the next in the series, as long as I haven't completely moved on and lost touch with the story by the time installment #2 is published.
See The Book Adventures for the usual Read-alikes
Upon arriving in Gamin, Ellis meets people who seem to know her well, who supposedly she once knew. Her cousin Jenny, her friend Alicia, and the unsettling Merrick among them. She never really settles in, keeps longing for some place that is more “home” than this strange town where the young people seem slightly off, the dishes and the victrolas appear and disappear seemingly without human intervention, and there are no children.
Ellis spends nearly the whole mini-novel discovering what makes Gamin strange, so I won’t give any of it away here. I will say I found the premise odd, unusual, and without much purpose. I am not sure what the novel is really about, in the end. Simply a young woman’s strange journey? An ancient tale of gods, mortals, and the battle between heaven and hell? Mortality? Other questions I wrangled with: what kind of people are the Gamin inhabitants? What does the baby on the train have to do with anything? Who are the Disir sisters? Where did she meet the man in her nightmares? How do the "outsiders" get to Gamin?
So, it was confusing. When I thought I was driving through regular corn fields, the story veered left into a crop circle, a totally unexpected direction that caught me off guard.
The main character was a little dumb about the people she meets in Gamin. It appears she has all this scientific knowledge, particularly about anatomy (where did that come from?), but when it comes to discovering who is the “bad guy” and who is the “good guy,” she makes the wrong decision, even though it should be blatantly obvious to the reader, and there were signs ALL OVER the place that should have indicated to her who she should trust and who was the monster.
I heartily dislike serial novels. The brevity interrupts the story at the edge of a cliff, makes the story too short to really get deeply involved in, and it requires me to wait for the resolution, at least once, possibly twice, depending on how many installments are written. And I wonder how it affects the writing - even Charles Dickens’ stories were inflated, bloated, and drawn out. This new trend irks me so much I am going to find out the causes, interests, motivations, and extent of this new serial novel trend in publishing. Look out for a post soon on why we're all suffering from serial novels right now.
Even with all its strangeness and brevity, I really enjoyed this piece and couldn’t put it down till I’d finished it (not challenging, given that my e-reader counted only 177 pages). The strangeness and the mystery kept me turning pages. For that reason, and because I'm conflicted about this portion of a novel, I give this a mediocre rating of "beach vacation." I may read the next in the series, as long as I haven't completely moved on and lost touch with the story by the time installment #2 is published.
See The Book Adventures for the usual Read-alikes
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