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A review by harrietj
The Ghost Hunters by Neil Spring
1.5
This was so overlong. Pages and pages of very little happening, and vast time jumps of anything from a year to six years that interrupt the narrative and quickly caused me to lose any impetus. I think perhaps the author got carried away with historical detail - do we need the exact dates and locations of every single event, and a list of the names and occupations of every single person in attendance? We certainly do not, and yet we get it, every time. I suspect that Neil Spring was caught up in showing off how much he knows about the Borley Rectory case, and forgot to write a compelling book.
The language is so simple, it felt like reading a children's book, and yet overly flowery, as though it was set in 1900 rather than 1930.
I got the sense that while Spring understands emotions, he can't really write them. The betrayal of Price using Sarah's father's death to further his own agenda was a nice inclusion, but Spring did not quite have the ability to write it with the depth it deserved. Similarly, the big 'twist' at the end was not given appropriate weight, which made it feel more like a convenient plot device than a meaningful piece of character work, and it failed to have any real emotional significance.
Overall, I was left wishing Spring had written a factual retelling of the Borley Rectory incident, which he probably could have done really well, and not tried his hand at fiction.
The language is so simple, it felt like reading a children's book, and yet overly flowery, as though it was set in 1900 rather than 1930.
I got the sense that while Spring understands emotions, he can't really write them. The betrayal of Price using Sarah's father's death to further his own agenda was a nice inclusion, but Spring did not quite have the ability to write it with the depth it deserved. Similarly, the big 'twist' at the end was not given appropriate weight, which made it feel more like a convenient plot device than a meaningful piece of character work, and it failed to have any real emotional significance.
Overall, I was left wishing Spring had written a factual retelling of the Borley Rectory incident, which he probably could have done really well, and not tried his hand at fiction.