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A review by remusreads
The House that Groaned by Karrie Fransman
2.0
In short: this wasn’t what I expected and not in a good way.
Perhaps I misunderstood the synopsis or maybe it was that the synopsis was worded poorly which allowed for multiple interpretations and made me, in a roundabout way, misunderstand what this graphic novel was going to be and was supposed to be. I went into it expecting quirkiness, of course, as the illustrations highly hinted at the fact that this wasn’t going to be a conventional book. The illustrations drew me in and ended up making this somewhat successful for me, but the words themselves are what let this down massively. I feel like it had so much potential but its execution was inherently poor and this made it ultimately fall down. It’s always disappointing when expectations aren’t met and my hopes were completely dashed with this as I feel like there was so much that it could’ve been and yet not much that it ended up being.
The plot didn’t make sense, the characters were flat, the setting was dry, the whole piece as a whole was incredibly deflating and there wasn’t much to pull it back to being remotely decent opposed to the illustrations themselves, which is why I rated it two stars - the art style was irresistible, quirky, and generally unlike anything I’ve seen before in anything of this nature. I do feel like if it had been padded out correctly, it would’ve offered so much more! I think it had so much to give but little chance to deliver, and that’s endlessly disappointing.
Despite it not being what I wanted, or expected, I would still recommend you to check this out - whether for the art style itself or whether the plot draws you in. It’s an incredibly quick read so you can’t really go wrong with giving it a go. I still think it’s worth a gander at, even if I didn’t pull anything particularly lasting from it.
Perhaps I misunderstood the synopsis or maybe it was that the synopsis was worded poorly which allowed for multiple interpretations and made me, in a roundabout way, misunderstand what this graphic novel was going to be and was supposed to be. I went into it expecting quirkiness, of course, as the illustrations highly hinted at the fact that this wasn’t going to be a conventional book. The illustrations drew me in and ended up making this somewhat successful for me, but the words themselves are what let this down massively. I feel like it had so much potential but its execution was inherently poor and this made it ultimately fall down. It’s always disappointing when expectations aren’t met and my hopes were completely dashed with this as I feel like there was so much that it could’ve been and yet not much that it ended up being.
The plot didn’t make sense, the characters were flat, the setting was dry, the whole piece as a whole was incredibly deflating and there wasn’t much to pull it back to being remotely decent opposed to the illustrations themselves, which is why I rated it two stars - the art style was irresistible, quirky, and generally unlike anything I’ve seen before in anything of this nature. I do feel like if it had been padded out correctly, it would’ve offered so much more! I think it had so much to give but little chance to deliver, and that’s endlessly disappointing.
Despite it not being what I wanted, or expected, I would still recommend you to check this out - whether for the art style itself or whether the plot draws you in. It’s an incredibly quick read so you can’t really go wrong with giving it a go. I still think it’s worth a gander at, even if I didn’t pull anything particularly lasting from it.