Jacob
I was so excited to step back into this world that Kliewer introduced to us through We Used to Live Here. He does such a great job at creating a sense of place and grounding the supernatural elements in his stories, and on finishing this book that was my favorite aspect of The Caretaker.
What bothered me throughout the story was the main character. I'm all for a lovable fuckup or interestingly annoying main character, but Macy just felt so inept to the point where it was frustrating.
I'm definitely interested in reading more of Kliewer's works in the future, but this story just didn't scratch the itch like We Used to Live Here did.
Below are some of my points of frustration with the story:
After the first set of rituals that Macy fails, I expected some sort of growth or understanding to come from her actions. However, all we get is more mistakes and annoying contrivances in order for her to mess up each time. In order to move the story along at a breakneck pace we never get to see her improve or succeed. We never get a moment for her to feel a little peace in order to reflect or process. The story gives us a list of things at the beginning, and we just watch Macy fail each item one-by-one as it goes along. As you can imagine, this becomes a bit repetitive and frustrating. Even after she has a horrible experience the night before, Macy begins to finally improve only to be distracted by a buzzing phone at the last minute.
I was so excited to step back into this world that Kliewer introduced to us through We Used to Live Here. He does such a great job at creating a sense of place and grounding the supernatural elements in his stories, and on finishing this book that was my favorite aspect of The Caretaker.
What bothered me throughout the story was the main character. I'm all for a lovable fuckup or interestingly annoying main character, but Macy just felt so inept to the point where it was frustrating.
I'm definitely interested in reading more of Kliewer's works in the future, but this story just didn't scratch the itch like We Used to Live Here did.
Below are some of my points of frustration with the story:
After the first set of rituals that Macy fails, I expected some sort of growth or understanding to come from her actions. However, all we get is more mistakes and annoying contrivances in order for her to mess up each time. In order to move the story along at a breakneck pace we never get to see her improve or succeed. We never get a moment for her to feel a little peace in order to reflect or process. The story gives us a list of things at the beginning, and we just watch Macy fail each item one-by-one as it goes along. As you can imagine, this becomes a bit repetitive and frustrating. Even after she has a horrible experience the night before, Macy begins to finally improve only to be distracted by a buzzing phone at the last minute.