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A review by goldingdaniel
In a Cottage in a Wood by Cass Green
1.0
This may be one of the poorest written books I have read in a long time.
First of all, the author telegraphs almost everything just before it happens. For example, randomly and out of the blue, the reader gets a chapter about how the main character is broke, with no money to her name and no real place to live. The out of place suddenness of this revelation (tagged with the fact that she is meeting a solicitor the next day) already tell us that she is about to gain something from her meeting with the solicitor (in this case a cottage). This sort of thing happens multiple times in the course of the book, treating every revelation like a shock when the average reader could see it coming due to the writing of the previous chapter. This left me as a reader feeling like the author was not only spoon feeding me information but also treating me like I was dumb and needed everything spelling out when the "revelation" was given to me.
It also felt like the book was written with a word count in mind, the author taking the longest possible way of writing the whole book. For instance, during a conversation between two characters, their names are mentioned constantly. "Linda's face curved into a smile while Neve said, "blah blah blah", Linda then replied with "blah blah blah" as Neve drank her coffee. Linda then said "blah blah" before pausing and saying "blah". It was exhausting to read and was clunky as hell. There is even a point in the book where the main character reads the description of Wikipedia from a Wikipedia page, seemingly drawing out more words for the desired word count.
The main character is completely unlikeable, I'm guessing the author was going for a grief-stricken character but completely failed as the only way they could get this across was by having Neve cry out of nowhere and also describing that she "fought the urge to hug" nearly every character in the book, including two random police officers, showing a lack of imagination on the authors part when it came to describing her. Despite the attempts, I had no sympathy for Neve and if anything found her an annoyance, which wasn't helped by her selfish behaviour and constant stupidity, always being 5 steps behind the reader. It doesn't help matters with "letters from Elizabeth" which give us all the answers before having Neve discover the SAME answers in the very next chapter, whilst treating the author as if they are incapable of reading between the lines (hell at one point Neve has to spell out that the character Elizabeth Astor Something could be the same as her Facebook friend Issy Astor, how? By saying "Issy? Short for Elizabeth perhaps?", it's insulting).
This whole thing was poorly written with clunky dialogue and a boring story, that can barely be judged as a mystery, not to mention the "twist" at the end made little sense and I found myself rolling my eyes after reading it. Very poor book
First of all, the author telegraphs almost everything just before it happens. For example, randomly and out of the blue, the reader gets a chapter about how the main character is broke, with no money to her name and no real place to live. The out of place suddenness of this revelation (tagged with the fact that she is meeting a solicitor the next day) already tell us that she is about to gain something from her meeting with the solicitor (in this case a cottage). This sort of thing happens multiple times in the course of the book, treating every revelation like a shock when the average reader could see it coming due to the writing of the previous chapter. This left me as a reader feeling like the author was not only spoon feeding me information but also treating me like I was dumb and needed everything spelling out when the "revelation" was given to me.
It also felt like the book was written with a word count in mind, the author taking the longest possible way of writing the whole book. For instance, during a conversation between two characters, their names are mentioned constantly. "Linda's face curved into a smile while Neve said, "blah blah blah", Linda then replied with "blah blah blah" as Neve drank her coffee. Linda then said "blah blah" before pausing and saying "blah". It was exhausting to read and was clunky as hell. There is even a point in the book where the main character reads the description of Wikipedia from a Wikipedia page, seemingly drawing out more words for the desired word count.
The main character is completely unlikeable, I'm guessing the author was going for a grief-stricken character but completely failed as the only way they could get this across was by having Neve cry out of nowhere and also describing that she "fought the urge to hug" nearly every character in the book, including two random police officers, showing a lack of imagination on the authors part when it came to describing her. Despite the attempts, I had no sympathy for Neve and if anything found her an annoyance, which wasn't helped by her selfish behaviour and constant stupidity, always being 5 steps behind the reader. It doesn't help matters with "letters from Elizabeth" which give us all the answers before having Neve discover the SAME answers in the very next chapter, whilst treating the author as if they are incapable of reading between the lines (hell at one point Neve has to spell out that the character Elizabeth Astor Something could be the same as her Facebook friend Issy Astor, how? By saying "Issy? Short for Elizabeth perhaps?", it's insulting).
This whole thing was poorly written with clunky dialogue and a boring story, that can barely be judged as a mystery, not to mention the "twist" at the end made little sense and I found myself rolling my eyes after reading it. Very poor book