Cover 5

Welcome to Dorley Hall

Welcome to Dorley Hall

2022

Ratings2

Average rating4.5

15

I enjoyed this book very much and read through it in like 4 days. Which for me is very quick, especially for this many pages. I was apprehensive about the premise of the story, I feel it could have gone in a very bad direction and the topic is very delicate if some incorrectly. But it was done in a great way. 

Greaves does something I love which is, that she talks about heavy topics and very clearly unethical and morally grey things but doesn't make that the focus. We are not supposed to think something of it. The book doesn't push you into thinking this is horrible and great, it doesn't scream at you to look at society as something that many literary books do that I hate. It just lets you enjoy the story with these characters. It goes deep into this world but doesn't encroach on the real world. It doesn't puncture the story and sully it with pressing questions about how this should change your perceptions and shit like that. 

I noticed halfway through the book that these chapters are posted online and thus written a chapter at a time. It made me read the book in a different way. It felt very slow and didn't really have the arch or structure I would expect from a standalone or even a book in a series. But now that I know that it is just a much bigger story cut into pieces it makes more sense. Although I could argue this novel should have ended a chapter earlier for it to be more cenmented as a book 1, with a nicer ending line and closure I don't mind it as much as I would have had I not known the origins of the story in that way. 

September 1, 2023Report this review