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If I Stopped Haunting You
by Colby Wilkens
Penelope and Neil are Indigenous authors with a tumultuous past; at a recent BookCon panel, Pen wound up pelting Neil with a book after berating him for betraying their people with his writing. Since then, she's gone into hiding and neither have had any success getting work done. So when a mutual friend sets up a writers' retreat in a haunted Scotland castle, they both accept...not knowing the other is there.
This book is part romance, part horror/thriller. At the castle, Pen and Neil both pretty much immediately start having strange experiences, while the other two writers don't. (Also, I always assumed writers retreats were more formal, with more people? I don't know.) There's ghosts and then there's Neil and Pen thinking about how attracted to each other they are, with Pen spending a lot of time being like, "But I hate him!"
The premise of the book isn't bad, but the execution isn't really there. Pen has complicated reasons for disliking Neil, but I spent a lot of time thinking that the backstory didn't fit her actions. Neil I liked more, but still found their relationship...off. And I got a bit of whiplash going between their story and the ghost story. The ghost story was also not great. The "mystery" of the ghosts was fairly obvious, and I was annoyed with the characters for just, like, putting aside the journal and letters they found. And the conclusion of the ghost story was both underwhelming and completely bizarre.
That said, I really appreciated the discussion of the issues facing BIPOC authors in publishing. That was great.
Thank you to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for the ARC.
This book is part romance, part horror/thriller. At the castle, Pen and Neil both pretty much immediately start having strange experiences, while the other two writers don't. (Also, I always assumed writers retreats were more formal, with more people? I don't know.) There's ghosts and then there's Neil and Pen thinking about how attracted to each other they are, with Pen spending a lot of time being like, "But I hate him!"
The premise of the book isn't bad, but the execution isn't really there. Pen has complicated reasons for disliking Neil, but I spent a lot of time thinking that the backstory didn't fit her actions. Neil I liked more, but still found their relationship...off. And I got a bit of whiplash going between their story and the ghost story. The ghost story was also not great. The "mystery" of the ghosts was fairly obvious, and I was annoyed with the characters for just, like, putting aside the journal and letters they found. And the conclusion of the ghost story was both underwhelming and completely bizarre.
That said, I really appreciated the discussion of the issues facing BIPOC authors in publishing. That was great.
Thank you to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for the ARC.