A review by kalkie
Astonishing Splashes of Colour by Clare Morrall

2.0

This is an odd little book. It follows the life of Kitty Wellington through various events as she tries to piece together her life following the death of her baby. She was brought up in a family with her father and 4 brothers, after the mysterious death of her mother and strange disappearance of her sister. As she tries to come to terms with her grief, she unravels the story of her mother's disappearance and the truth about her sister, and unearths some of the family secrets.

The story starts off well enough, and by the time it starts to drag and get boring, the reader is already well into the book. Rather than wanting to finish the book I felt more of a compulsion to do so just to see what happened. Kitty is generally unlikable, and all the characters are flat and rather two-dimensional. Even the twists and turns, which were no doubt meant to surprise the reader, were as predictable as Christmas and totally transparent.

By the end the book develops into a kind of farce with the feeling that the author had a checklist of scenarios she felt she needed to check off a list to complete a novel. Overall it reads more like a book "written by formula" with very little emotion or feeling in the pages.

I certainly won't be running out to buy any more books by Morrall.