Here in Avalon

I saw a few reviews that suggested an intriguing premise, so Tara Isabella Burton's Here in Avalon ended up on my TBR. Unfortunately, it doesn't live up to the fulsome praise it seems to have received. I notice, increasingly, that reviews are starting to look more and more like rephrased publicity copy. 

The protagonist of this book, Rose, is a 28 year old coder living in New York. Her childhood was chaotic: a largely absent mother left Rose and her older sister, the beautiful, witty, and talented Cecilia, to fend for themselves. Largely through Cecilia's ingenuity, they remained clothed, fed, and moderately educated. Both Cecilia and Rose, as adults, have reacted to this childhood. Cecilia sees romance and adventure in everything, flitting from opportunity to opportunity without ever really following through, and slinking back home whenever things fall apart. A talented pianist, she turns down a music scholarship to play in bars. Rose, organised, efficient, and responsible, lives a tightly-controlled life. Her fiance, a finance bro, and she, listen to improving podcasts and go the gym. He disapproves of flighty Cecilia and the way Rose is constantly bailing her out. 

Cecilia returns home one summer, more distracted and confused than ever. One night, drunk, she confesses to Rose that she impulsively married a man named Paul, and then abruptly leaves him. She's become involved with a strange group of people, perhaps a cult, who perform a cabaret on a boat. It culminates in a vicious argument, and the next day, Cecilia vanishes. For a while, Rose assumes she's just off once again, but the more Rose hears about the cabaret called Avalon, the more concerned she is that Cecilia might be in danger. Over her tech bro fiance's distaste, Rose teams up with Cecilia's husband Paul, and together they begin to hunt for Avalon. When she finds the cabaret troupe, Rose starts to wonder whether they are truly real, or if she has stumbled into some sort of alternative reality. Is Cecilia really ‘away with the fairies'? 

The story had an interesting premise, as I said, but the author cannot carry it through. Every single point, every aspect of every relationship, every character development, is beaten to death with a club from the Department of the Painfully Obvious. It's clear that the author is trying to develop a very romantic story, but it's not romantic, it's just annoying. There's a certain character type she's aiming for: highstrung, damaged women, who yearn for sentimental, magical worlds. Done well, it can be enchanting; done badly, it will make you (horrifically) sympathize with the actual villain of the story, a finance bro who just wants to listen to his podcasts and drink his protein shakes.