Reviews

Reading 'The Toll House' by Carly Reagon, I found myself wanting to shake the author and cry, 'More action! More action!'

This was a disappointing read: rather than telling me what Kelda feels and thinks, I wished Reagon had - at the start of the novel for instance - shown me what was sinister about the house on Kelda and Dylan's approach; what did they actually see? Then I could have made up my own mind that it was sinister, rather than bluntly being told by the author:

'an odd feeling crept over her [...]. A stirring in the pit of her stomach. [...] The house. It seemed to want her, need her'.

I'm not a fan of authors spelling out characters' thoughts and feelings as though taking down dictation. I want to feel what the characters feel, not just be told they're, for example, unsettled. Show me the thing that makes the character feel unsettled and then I'll feel unsettled too.

As a result of this pedestrian style of writing, this novel was impossible to invest in. 'The Toll House' basically comprised: 'she did this'; 'she thought that'; 'then this happened'; 'he said that' and 'she replied'. Everything was told to me; there was no necessity for any work to be done on my part as the reader.

I want an author to startle me with their skill with words. I want to be wowed by an author's flair! I want writing to be so characteristic that I could pick it out of a crowd as a certain author. I don't have reading time to devote to books that plod along like this one.

On top of that, the shift between present tense for the narrative of 1863 and past tense for 'now'/'six months ago' was unpleasantly jarring.

If I'm going to love a ghost story, I need the linguistic elegance of Wilkie Collins. Give me the muscular characterisation of Susan Hill, or give me the shock of the grotesque like Sue Rainsford, the taut atmosphere of a Laura Purcell novel. I want the blunt force of a Shirley Jackson story.

This novel was, in fact, carried off so much more convincingly and compellingly three years ago by the fantastic Alison Littlewood in 'Mistletoe'.

Despite this, my thanks go to Little, Brown Book Group UK for the chance to review an eARC through Netgalley.