Rhiannon
Naturally, I'm a sucker for anything rabbit related in cover or title (is that shallow?) and so I'm guaranteed to give it a shot.
And this had such an inviting premise – a southern gothic horror where a young college student returns to his small-town North Carolina home to look further into the mysterious death of his (long-dead) mother after he starts receiving cryptic messages from an unknown source. Hints of folk witchcraft and mysterious, otherworldly spaces are alluded to.
Although the writing itself was decent, I felt the coherence and pacing were purposeless and glacial. I was struggling to find the ‘mystery' to this story, some kind of real plot tension besides the obnoxious and selfish behaviour of the MC, but nothing noteworthy happened until about the 60% mark. Up until that point I was even questioning its placement as a horror novel – it seemed more a meandering drama-filled narrative of the small town lives of characters that just weren't that interesting or engaging. I honestly didn't like a single character in this story – they were all boring, flat and/or incredibly irritating. The ‘mystery language' which I suppose is there to create... well... some mystery, seemingly had no logic or effective purpose at all. The Night House could have been so much more of a central character, as what was there was intriguing: a bit of ‘liminal space' creepy horror to it, but again it felt glanced over and left wanting and unfinished.
I think this needed more focus with a clearer objective, with less unnecessary info-dump material and more character development. I don't have a problem reading characters I don't like, or are ambiguously moral, but I need them to be interesting enough to keep reading about, or a plot that's truly engaging. Unfortunately, this one didn't work for me.
My thanks to NetGalley and Orbit Books for the ARC. I am leaving this review voluntarily. All opinions are my own.
Originally posted at www.amazon.ca.
Naturally, I'm a sucker for anything rabbit related in cover or title (is that shallow?) and so I'm guaranteed to give it a shot.
And this had such an inviting premise – a southern gothic horror where a young college student returns to his small-town North Carolina home to look further into the mysterious death of his (long-dead) mother after he starts receiving cryptic messages from an unknown source. Hints of folk witchcraft and mysterious, otherworldly spaces are alluded to.
Although the writing itself was decent, I felt the coherence and pacing were purposeless and glacial. I was struggling to find the ‘mystery' to this story, some kind of real plot tension besides the obnoxious and selfish behaviour of the MC, but nothing noteworthy happened until about the 60% mark. Up until that point I was even questioning its placement as a horror novel – it seemed more a meandering drama-filled narrative of the small town lives of characters that just weren't that interesting or engaging. I honestly didn't like a single character in this story – they were all boring, flat and/or incredibly irritating. The ‘mystery language' which I suppose is there to create... well... some mystery, seemingly had no logic or effective purpose at all. The Night House could have been so much more of a central character, as what was there was intriguing: a bit of ‘liminal space' creepy horror to it, but again it felt glanced over and left wanting and unfinished.
I think this needed more focus with a clearer objective, with less unnecessary info-dump material and more character development. I don't have a problem reading characters I don't like, or are ambiguously moral, but I need them to be interesting enough to keep reading about, or a plot that's truly engaging. Unfortunately, this one didn't work for me.
My thanks to NetGalley and Orbit Books for the ARC. I am leaving this review voluntarily. All opinions are my own.
Originally posted at www.amazon.ca.