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A review by divapitbull
Old Blood by Karina Halle
2.0
2 stars is being generous and rounding up from 1 1/2. Old Blood is a novella that chronicles the life (and by life, I mean ENTIRE life AND death) of Pippa – The Creepy Clown Lady. The beginning – when she saw her first ghosts as a child was interesting. The end – which gets into how she came to be Declan’s Nanny; and the bits about Jakob her spirit guide and the Thin Veil were interesting. Everything in between was tedious and boring. Pippa’s story would have been better served being told (in an abbreviated version) in a prologue.
I may have been particularly harsh with Old Blood because it felt like the cherry on the icing of the cake of a festering pet peeve of mine. Back in the day – authors wrote mostly standalone stories. They let the reader have closure and they went on their merry way until another original thought struck and then they wrote another original story. In recent years every book written has turned into a series – and not just a series but a never-ending series – sending the reader down one rabbit hole after another. Every time a side character farts it requires a novella if not a complete spin-off. Storylines spinning out forever. And if you want to know what’s going on and get to a conclusion that makes sense – you must read the majority (if not all) of it. Sometimes it makes reading feel like less of a joy and more of a hostage situation. But I digress.
My takeaway from Old Blood is that Pippa is not an especially sympathetic or likeable character. She has consistently throughout her entire life made poor decisions without any thought to the possible consequences or how other people could be impacted, when negative consequences have occurred she has failed/refused to take responsibility and (even worse) actively blamed other people for the consequences of her choices. I don’t know if the intention of Old Blood was to make Ingrid (Perry’s mother) a *more* sympathetic character – but it did. Ingrid was not responsible for the culmination of Pippa’s life; and I can understand why the déjà vu she experienced with Perry freaked her out so badly.
I may have been particularly harsh with Old Blood because it felt like the cherry on the icing of the cake of a festering pet peeve of mine. Back in the day – authors wrote mostly standalone stories. They let the reader have closure and they went on their merry way until another original thought struck and then they wrote another original story. In recent years every book written has turned into a series – and not just a series but a never-ending series – sending the reader down one rabbit hole after another. Every time a side character farts it requires a novella if not a complete spin-off. Storylines spinning out forever. And if you want to know what’s going on and get to a conclusion that makes sense – you must read the majority (if not all) of it. Sometimes it makes reading feel like less of a joy and more of a hostage situation. But I digress.
My takeaway from Old Blood is that Pippa is not an especially sympathetic or likeable character. She has consistently throughout her entire life made poor decisions without any thought to the possible consequences or how other people could be impacted, when negative consequences have occurred she has failed/refused to take responsibility and (even worse) actively blamed other people for the consequences of her choices. I don’t know if the intention of Old Blood was to make Ingrid (Perry’s mother) a *more* sympathetic character – but it did. Ingrid was not responsible for the culmination of Pippa’s life; and I can understand why the déjà vu she experienced with Perry freaked her out so badly.