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A review by davastewart
Pompomberry House by Rosen Trevithick
3.0
Once again, I find myself wishing there were degrees between three and four stars. This book is entertaining. It made me laugh a few times, and I ended up describing the plot to my husband which is a sure tip off that it was on my mind. I also couldn't predict the ending and was fooled by a little false foreshadowing.
So why not four stars? There was some weird stuff. There were a few places where the characterization was so uneven I stopped enjoying the story to try and figure out what I had missed. There was also the strange focus on the hats belonging to the main character. I don't know why that bothered me, but it did.
One other oddity was how much the style changed toward the end. Chapters would end with lines like "And then I was shot and I died." Then the next chapter would start with "Except not really, I was just playing dead." I felt like the author was sort of making fun of soap-opera-style cliffhangers, and if ONE chapter had ended like that it probably wouldn't have bothered me, but several chapters ended like that. If those endings had been scattered throughout the book instead of clumped together right at the end...
While I have listed some things that bugged me, I don't mean to imply that Pompomberry House isn't worth reading. It is. It's funny, the subject matter is timely and amusing (indie writer forums and the weird characters you encounter there), and it's well-written. It's also pretty tough to guess whodunit, and you are left wondering if the narrator will get back together with her husband - so that it is almost two mysteries in one. I just couldn't quite give it four stars. Maybe I'm becoming a grumpy, hard-to-please reviewer like Enid Kibbler in the story.
So why not four stars? There was some weird stuff. There were a few places where the characterization was so uneven I stopped enjoying the story to try and figure out what I had missed. There was also the strange focus on the hats belonging to the main character. I don't know why that bothered me, but it did.
One other oddity was how much the style changed toward the end. Chapters would end with lines like "And then I was shot and I died." Then the next chapter would start with "Except not really, I was just playing dead." I felt like the author was sort of making fun of soap-opera-style cliffhangers, and if ONE chapter had ended like that it probably wouldn't have bothered me, but several chapters ended like that. If those endings had been scattered throughout the book instead of clumped together right at the end...
While I have listed some things that bugged me, I don't mean to imply that Pompomberry House isn't worth reading. It is. It's funny, the subject matter is timely and amusing (indie writer forums and the weird characters you encounter there), and it's well-written. It's also pretty tough to guess whodunit, and you are left wondering if the narrator will get back together with her husband - so that it is almost two mysteries in one. I just couldn't quite give it four stars. Maybe I'm becoming a grumpy, hard-to-please reviewer like Enid Kibbler in the story.