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3.59 AVERAGE
3.59 AVERAGE
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
There's a LOT packed into this book. It is very lofty and interesting, but some parts worked better for me than others for me. The first portion follows young Wilder's perspective during a summer at his recently deceased Uncle's cabin by the sea. He has a magnetic relationship with two local kids, Nat and Harper. I really enjoyed the coming of age feel to this section, and I was bought into Wilder's emotional world. The writing is beautiful and immersive, and the relationships were believable and compelling. After an accident with his father's knife, it is revealed that Nat's father is a serial killer who has been tormenting the area and breaking into houses to take pictures of sleeping children, the Butcher Man of Whistler bay. Nat dies as a result of his injury, and Wilder never gets closure about his knowledge of or involvement with the murders. Understandly, this is very traumatic for him. The next section follows Wilder in college shortly after these events, where he meets and falls in love with Skye. Skye is extremely supportive and understanding of Wilder's trauma, and ends up moves into Wilder's dorm and comforting him. Wilder eventually opens up to Skye, and Skye pushes him to reach out to Nat's father in prison. After a tense and emotional meeting with him, Wilder and Skye have a romantic evening in a hotel, and shorty after Skye completely disappears. We find out that Skye is actually a writer who got close to Wilder to steal his research and experience on the Dagger Man case to write the story as his own. Wilder vows he will return for revenge, and the book cuts to another section. At this point (about halfway through the book) I was very bought into the plot, but then the narrative pivots again. Now we are following a post- divorce aging Wilder, who returns to Whistler bay obsessed with his lost love Skye and Skye's fictionalized manuscript about his childhood summe. He is literally haunted by the ghosts that Skye wrote into his version of the story. At this point, the plot lost me a bit as it was dragging and quite confusing. Wilder decides to commit suicide by hemlock, and finds and injured Skye stuck in Nat's old beer hiding spot. This is an interesting twist, but at this point the whol narrative takes on an unreal quality and begins to feel like fiction. Skye and Wilder reconcile and fall back in love and live happily every after. Until we find out that this isn't true at all. Next, we shift into the perspective of Pearl, who we find out is the daughter of one of the victims of the Dagger man. But, confusingly, it is revealed that Pearl is Skye. In fact, what we have been reading is Pearl/ Skye's fictionalized version of events, and Pearl wrote herself as a male character. Pearl runs into a brand new character named Gracie at Nat's old home, and we find out she is actually Harper and Nat's baby. We also find out that Nat and Wilder were half brothers, and Harper killed Nat to keep him from prison for taking the photos. I *believe* this part is true and not fictionalized. We are left to meditate on the ownership of true crime stories- whose are they are to tell, how the person telling it impacts the story, and how much is fictionalized. In a final, confusing and supernatural layer, we learn that Harper actually accidentally killed Wilder shortly after the events with Skye while attempting to bring Nat back to life with witchcraft. The novel suggests that on fact our characters are magically trapped within the pages of a book. This wasn't my favorite aspect of the novel. However, I really appreciated how all the details came together and the attention to detail that hinted at the reveal all the way through. Overall, there were a lot of enjoyable and interesting aspects of this book, although the ambitious framing and concept cause the pace to drag a little bit. Regardless, I will be thinking about this book and the ideas in it for a while.
dark
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This was a beautifully written and deeply confusing story that spans multiple unexplained point of view characters until very close to the end and even then you're never quite sure what is real. Sometimes I read books and it just really feels like the author was trying to work some personal stuff out. And I know that authors are putting personal stuff in their work but I mean this one I think was Ward trying to work through their feelings about writing and who can tell what story and what is real and where does one draw the line between reality and fiction. You know, light reading. I imagine I'll be thinking about this book whether I want to or not.
dark
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
Honestly? I've no idea what I just read.
There's a weirdness to this book, that made sense when I remembered it's the same author as [b:The Last House on Needless Street|54621094|The Last House on Needless Street|Catriona Ward|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1603323638l/54621094._SY75_.jpg|85222103]. The author definitely has a distinct voice, but in this case, it also read as slightly disjointing at times. I found it was more difficult to forge a connection to the any of the characters here. There's a massive time jump (from teenage/college age kid, to elderly man) that wedged a gap in the story. And then someone called Pearl enters the fold, and for the life of me, I do not know where she fits into the plot. My interest waned slowly but surely when it reached this point, until I just didn't care by the end.
It was unclear what the driving point for the story truly was. Was it a coming-of-age beach side tale ? Or is the focus all on the betrayal / plagiarising? Or was it all a book-within-a-book (...within a book??) meta fueled chaos? Unclear. There's a lot going on and it got a bit tedious.
I think perhaps this one was simply not for me.
There's a weirdness to this book, that made sense when I remembered it's the same author as [b:The Last House on Needless Street|54621094|The Last House on Needless Street|Catriona Ward|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1603323638l/54621094._SY75_.jpg|85222103]. The author definitely has a distinct voice, but in this case, it also read as slightly disjointing at times. I found it was more difficult to forge a connection to the any of the characters here. There's a massive time jump (from teenage/college age kid, to elderly man) that wedged a gap in the story. And then someone called Pearl enters the fold, and for the life of me, I do not know where she fits into the plot. My interest waned slowly but surely when it reached this point, until I just didn't care by the end.
It was unclear what the driving point for the story truly was. Was it a coming-of-age beach side tale ? Or is the focus all on the betrayal / plagiarising? Or was it all a book-within-a-book (...within a book??) meta fueled chaos? Unclear. There's a lot going on and it got a bit tedious.
I think perhaps this one was simply not for me.
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Bon, bon, bon... Le cas Catriona Ward. J'ai lu 4 de ses livres (sur 5), j'en ai farouchement adoré un (La dernière maison avant les bois), cordialement haï un autre (Sundial, non traduit), et j'ai plus ou moins aimé les deux autres (Little Eve, non traduit, et celui-ci) même s'ils m'ont agacés. Bref ses livres ne le laissent pas indifférente.
Catriona Ward ne souffre pas des problèmes qui affligent les autres auteurs de genre (écriture moche, twist stupides, intrigues indigentes), c'est plutôt l'inverse : elle est bien trop intelligente pour son bien. Ses intrigues sont des cathédrales gothiques : grandioses, compliquées, bourrées de petits détails subtils et parfois géniaux, et fignolés à la main. Au risque de gaver les lecteurices. Je me souviens que je m'étais exclamé "oh ça va bien avec les twists toutes les deux pages !" à la lecture de Little Eve alors que c'étaient des twist intelligents, pas les twist pas crédibles d'1 polar sur 2, et que j'aimais franchement le livre. Et quand ce n'est pas une abondance de twists qui donne l'impression de regarder un roman en convulsions, ce sont des constructions incroyablement complexes qui finalement s'avèrent très artificielles et forcées (ce roman-ci). Pour certaines intrigues, une construction complexe est une bénédiction (La dernière maison... avait absolument besoin d'une construction labyrinthique), pour d'autre, c'est un peu du torture porn psychologique.
Qu'on ne se méprene pas : Catriona Ward écrit extrêmement bien, c'est intelligent, recherché, prenant (je l'ai lu en une soirée). C'est largement au-dessus du lot du genre (le polar psychologique). C'est à recommander à n'importe qui. Mais, c'est aussi un peu trop. Et pour les Français, c'est aussi un peu problématique parce que les deux traduits sont les deux qui sont les plus mindfuck au niveau construction. Ils sont un peu trop similaires sur ce point. Ça fait un peu gimmick.
À noter que j'avais compris le secret des intrigues des deux livres traduits en français avant la fin : à la moitié de La dernière maison... (bon en fait dès la 2eme page, j'ai eu un soupçon, confirme à la moitié) et au deux tiers pour celui-ci. A chaque fois, ils m'ont fait penser à d'autres romans sur ces sujets/avec ces twists. Non que ce soit facile (je pense que j'avais juste les bonnes références), mais c'est aussi une partie du jeu dans la construction des romans de Ward : elle dissimule assez d'indices pour qu'on puisse commencer à deviner. Ce n'est pas forcément du goût de tous les lecteurs du genre : certains aiment vraiment être pris complètement au dépourvus par le twist final.
En conclusion : si vous n'avez pas lu La dernière maison..., vous pouvez lire ce livre-là. Si vous l'avez lu, vous aurez l'impression que l'autrice essaye de vous refourguer une casse-tête similaire mais pas avec la même saveur à la fin. Ça passera moins bien.
Catriona Ward ne souffre pas des problèmes qui affligent les autres auteurs de genre (écriture moche, twist stupides, intrigues indigentes), c'est plutôt l'inverse : elle est bien trop intelligente pour son bien. Ses intrigues sont des cathédrales gothiques : grandioses, compliquées, bourrées de petits détails subtils et parfois géniaux, et fignolés à la main. Au risque de gaver les lecteurices. Je me souviens que je m'étais exclamé "oh ça va bien avec les twists toutes les deux pages !" à la lecture de Little Eve alors que c'étaient des twist intelligents, pas les twist pas crédibles d'1 polar sur 2, et que j'aimais franchement le livre. Et quand ce n'est pas une abondance de twists qui donne l'impression de regarder un roman en convulsions, ce sont des constructions incroyablement complexes qui finalement s'avèrent très artificielles et forcées (ce roman-ci). Pour certaines intrigues, une construction complexe est une bénédiction (La dernière maison... avait absolument besoin d'une construction labyrinthique), pour d'autre, c'est un peu du torture porn psychologique.
Qu'on ne se méprene pas : Catriona Ward écrit extrêmement bien, c'est intelligent, recherché, prenant (je l'ai lu en une soirée). C'est largement au-dessus du lot du genre (le polar psychologique). C'est à recommander à n'importe qui. Mais, c'est aussi un peu trop. Et pour les Français, c'est aussi un peu problématique parce que les deux traduits sont les deux qui sont les plus mindfuck au niveau construction. Ils sont un peu trop similaires sur ce point. Ça fait un peu gimmick.
À noter que j'avais compris le secret des intrigues des deux livres traduits en français avant la fin : à la moitié de La dernière maison... (bon en fait dès la 2eme page, j'ai eu un soupçon, confirme à la moitié) et au deux tiers pour celui-ci. A chaque fois, ils m'ont fait penser à d'autres romans sur ces sujets/avec ces twists. Non que ce soit facile (je pense que j'avais juste les bonnes références), mais c'est aussi une partie du jeu dans la construction des romans de Ward : elle dissimule assez d'indices pour qu'on puisse commencer à deviner. Ce n'est pas forcément du goût de tous les lecteurs du genre : certains aiment vraiment être pris complètement au dépourvus par le twist final.
En conclusion : si vous n'avez pas lu La dernière maison..., vous pouvez lire ce livre-là. Si vous l'avez lu, vous aurez l'impression que l'autrice essaye de vous refourguer une casse-tête similaire mais pas avec la même saveur à la fin. Ça passera moins bien.
dark
mysterious
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Holy wow, this is an impressive piece of work; so much was packed in but in such an effortless way. I don't totally agree with it being a horror novel, instead I find it rather difficult to categorize. There are Gothic elements (and I fucking love a Gothic touch). It's definitely got a psychological thriller-y touch--the blur between reality and fiction becoming continuously less discernible.
I do kind of understand others' critiques of the story becoming over complicated towards the end, but it personally didn't bother me or take away from the story; I just felt like it played to the psychological element of the story.
I can see myself rereading this in the future, seeing as I had to urge to start again at page 1 immediately after finishing. Also, I couldn't put this down--I devoured the last 250ish pages in one sitting. I felt invested in the story and connected to the characters in a way that I don't typically get for other books I read. Thus far, one of my favorite reads of 2023. I have yet to read Sundial or The Last House on Needless Street but they have definitely moved up in my queue of books to read. I'll also noted that I liked this significantly more than Little Eve (although enjoyable, not close to how much I dug this one).
I do kind of understand others' critiques of the story becoming over complicated towards the end, but it personally didn't bother me or take away from the story; I just felt like it played to the psychological element of the story.
I can see myself rereading this in the future, seeing as I had to urge to start again at page 1 immediately after finishing. Also, I couldn't put this down--I devoured the last 250ish pages in one sitting. I felt invested in the story and connected to the characters in a way that I don't typically get for other books I read. Thus far, one of my favorite reads of 2023. I have yet to read Sundial or The Last House on Needless Street but they have definitely moved up in my queue of books to read. I'll also noted that I liked this significantly more than Little Eve (although enjoyable, not close to how much I dug this one).
adventurous
challenging
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I really enjoyed the first half but it did get a little confusing in the end. It was challenging to figure out how I felt at the end, and while I think I liked it, I also think there was one too many turns.