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A review by jesssalexander
The Juniper Tree by Barbara Comyns
1.0
I read the Grimm fairy tale of the same name directly before the book and enjoyed that immensely more.
The whole book is narrated in a flat, emotionless tone. The first 150 pages just build and build to one tiny paragraph: "THE LID CAME DOWN." And then poof, in the last 20 pages the baby is dead, Bella gets her freedom back, no one goes to jail and the spell is broken. It was extremely anticlimactic and I felt cheated out of an actual story. The characters felt underdeveloped, especially Tommy/Marlichine. I did love that her name shifts depending on where she was. That was a really cool manifestation of how the Forbes' life swallowed up Bella's own. But how did Tommy feel about Johnny's death or her mother's time in the asylum? Why is there no exchange between the characters after Bella's reentry into the world. Also Bernard sucks. This was just a crappy sad read.
The whole book is narrated in a flat, emotionless tone. The first 150 pages just build and build to one tiny paragraph: "THE LID CAME DOWN." And then poof, in the last 20 pages the baby is dead, Bella gets her freedom back, no one goes to jail and the spell is broken. It was extremely anticlimactic and I felt cheated out of an actual story. The characters felt underdeveloped, especially Tommy/Marlichine. I did love that her name shifts depending on where she was. That was a really cool manifestation of how the Forbes' life swallowed up Bella's own. But how did Tommy feel about Johnny's death or her mother's time in the asylum? Why is there no exchange between the characters after Bella's reentry into the world. Also Bernard sucks. This was just a crappy sad read.