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A review by claire_loves_books
Croak by Gina Damico
2.0
I feel like this has the potential to be a book I could really enjoy. I really liked the premise and reading about an apprentice Grim reaper is right up my street but it just didn't quite live up to that with the execution. The narrative seemed a bit choppy, going from close to omniscient third person and back again, and the writing was fairly practical for the most part but occasionally a really poetic sentence would be thrown in and it just felt out of place. It was funny in places, and I think I'd have enjoyed it more if everybody was a bit less tortured and Damico had concentrated on writing a funny book rather than a serious book.
I didn't like Lex, she physically attacks people (biting, punching ect.) for no reason other than she's angry and she expects people to tolerate it, give her a slap on the wrist, forgive her and then let it carry on. And the whole' her powers made her do it' is a terrible excuse, they made her feel angry but nothing made her physically attack people. Lex was supposed to be badass and snarky but she just came across as spoiled and nasty. The rest of the characters seemed fairly one dimensional as well.
We also had a case of teenagers solve it for themselves, there's no really reason not tell the adults, but to keep the plot going the teenagers here make the (bad) decision to keep the whole serial killer on the loose thing secret and investigate themselves, although their investigation basically involves seeing all the murdered people and not actually managing to figure out who dunnit.
The paranormal aspect of Croak (the town) was interesting and well thought out but the town itself seemed a bit ridiculous- 80 people and you've got a restaurant and a pub that serves food, and everything is always busting and busy even though we are told half everyone works ridiculously long hours (like 10-14 hours) there's barely enough people to fill one pub if all of them were there at the same time (and not half working/sleeping/not drinking in a pub!).
I also felt like it stopped short, like it was missing an epilogue or something. I was just disappointed, I really though I was going to enjoy but I just didn't and found myself getting bored.
I didn't like Lex, she physically attacks people (biting, punching ect.) for no reason other than she's angry and she expects people to tolerate it, give her a slap on the wrist, forgive her and then let it carry on. And the whole' her powers made her do it' is a terrible excuse, they made her feel angry but nothing made her physically attack people. Lex was supposed to be badass and snarky but she just came across as spoiled and nasty. The rest of the characters seemed fairly one dimensional as well.
We also had a case of teenagers solve it for themselves, there's no really reason not tell the adults, but to keep the plot going the teenagers here make the (bad) decision to keep the whole serial killer on the loose thing secret and investigate themselves, although their investigation basically involves seeing all the murdered people and not actually managing to figure out who dunnit.
The paranormal aspect of Croak (the town) was interesting and well thought out but the town itself seemed a bit ridiculous- 80 people and you've got a restaurant and a pub that serves food, and everything is always busting and busy even though we are told half everyone works ridiculously long hours (like 10-14 hours) there's barely enough people to fill one pub if all of them were there at the same time (and not half working/sleeping/not drinking in a pub!).
I also felt like it stopped short, like it was missing an epilogue or something. I was just disappointed, I really though I was going to enjoy but I just didn't and found myself getting bored.