A review by turtle_puff95
Mary: An Awakening of Terror by Nat Cassidy

challenging dark tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.0

For being so highly rated, I really didn't like this. It has a grungy, grubby feeling the whole way through. If that was the intent of the atmosphere, the author nailed it. This book just felt dirty.
Mary loses her job and gets a call from her Aunt (nasty woman) that she hates. She goes to live with her for a bit and sort of find herself. What she finds is she can see dead woman all over town and finds more and more of her memories that she's forgotten.
Turns out, she is the reincarnation of a serial killer who was a worshipped cult leader. The cult pretty much just kills a few women every year for the heck of it. Mary finds a way to fight back against the killer inside of her and kill him, leaving just herself, reborn as her own person now, no longer controlled by the killer. And she also befriends the dead women, takes them to live with her in New York and occasionally let's them kill people. But hey. At least she likes herself now.

Eye roll. This was slow moving, and even through the horror elements I became bored. This went a totally different direction than I imagined and not in a good way. As soon as the cult showed up I was ready to DNF. I was just too far in to not know what happened.
As far as horror books go, you can skip this one. You aren't missing much.
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