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3.46 AVERAGE
3.46 AVERAGE
This book looked amazing but was such a burden and a difficulty to read. I couldn't understand what was going on and gave up quickly.
What a shame as the storyline seemed interesting
What a shame as the storyline seemed interesting
Recommended for fans of 19th century gothic horror. Timeline is jumbled to extend the mystery. Ending is worth it.
A well written and ambitious debut from Catriona Ward but I personally found it slow and ultimately quite dull. She has honed her style with Little Eve and The Last House on Needless Street, so I'd recommend those over this one.
The feel of this book is somewhere between the (Netflix) Haunting of Hill House and Wuthering Heights. It makes for a creepy combination, but I was never invested enough in the characters to care much what was going to happen to them--which had a lot to do with the fractured sense of time in the book and the multiple points of view. When those elements work for me, they work really well, but usually they don't and this one was more of the same...but then again, I hated Wuthering Heights.
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
4.5 stars rounded up. Really enjoyed it. It dragged a bit in the middle which frustrated me at first but the ending definitely made up for it. Even if you guess the twist before the reveal, it’s done so well that it doesn’t matter.
challenging
dark
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
The last 150 pages of this book test the reader. Several storylines are introduced, and you’ll be flipping back and forth trying to keep the timelines straight, and looking at the family tree to make sense of it. But the payoff is 100% worth it. Creepy, devastating, and completely unique.
I only knocked 1 star off because like a lot of Catriona’s books, some storylines could’ve been heavily condensed.
I only knocked 1 star off because like a lot of Catriona’s books, some storylines could’ve been heavily condensed.
I first heard of Catriona Ward when Stephen King provided a quote for Last House on Needless Street. He's one of my all time favourite authors and I was excited by the premise of that book, though at the time it was several months from release.
So in the meantime I added Rawblood and Little Eve to my "Want to Read" list and went on my way.
I went in with reasonably high expectations, I think, and the book was harder to read than I expected. With different chapters being told from different perspectives over the course of 100 years or so of the life of the Villarcas family, I found that the chapters from Iris' perspective were my favourite, while much of the first half of the book is told in the form of diary entries from Charles Danforth. These chapters were tough to get through, long and rambling and many times the character himself was not especially likeable, I found my mind sometimes drifting in particularly long passages of his.
I am glad, however, that I powered through these sometimes tedious chapters because other characters and stories and lives leapt off the pages.
What followed was the tragic and haunting story of Iris, and of the generations of women that came before her as she first rebels against the idea of her family curse before finally accepting the truth under tragic circumstances. Iris' story is heartbreaking, and unjust and has just enough truly masterful aspects of gothic horror that when I finished the book in the late hours, I lay in bed trying to sleep and was picturing the white lady over my shoulder.
This could easily have been a 4 or a 5 star review, but for the tediousness of some of the chapters, and some truly disturbing scenes of animal cruelty that left a bad taste in my mouth and I felt didn't really offer anything to the story.
That being said, I will definitely be checking out Last House, I can only imagine the growth in Ward's evocative writing style between her debut and third novels
So in the meantime I added Rawblood and Little Eve to my "Want to Read" list and went on my way.
I went in with reasonably high expectations, I think, and the book was harder to read than I expected. With different chapters being told from different perspectives over the course of 100 years or so of the life of the Villarcas family, I found that the chapters from Iris' perspective were my favourite, while much of the first half of the book is told in the form of diary entries from Charles Danforth. These chapters were tough to get through, long and rambling and many times the character himself was not especially likeable, I found my mind sometimes drifting in particularly long passages of his.
I am glad, however, that I powered through these sometimes tedious chapters because other characters and stories and lives leapt off the pages.
What followed was the tragic and haunting story of Iris, and of the generations of women that came before her as she first rebels against the idea of her family curse before finally accepting the truth under tragic circumstances. Iris' story is heartbreaking, and unjust and has just enough truly masterful aspects of gothic horror that when I finished the book in the late hours, I lay in bed trying to sleep and was picturing the white lady over my shoulder.
This could easily have been a 4 or a 5 star review, but for the tediousness of some of the chapters, and some truly disturbing scenes of animal cruelty that left a bad taste in my mouth and I felt didn't really offer anything to the story.
That being said, I will definitely be checking out Last House, I can only imagine the growth in Ward's evocative writing style between her debut and third novels