Ratings24
Average rating2.8
It really hurts me to write a negative review, I recognize that a lot of effort went into writing, publishing, and promoting it. I read this for Stacks of Strange, and had it not been for that I would have DNF'd it early on.
I want to say that my main problem was the writing style, but truthfully I read pretty widely, so I have encountered many types of writing styles. What was going on here, and it drove me nuts, was the withholding of information from the reader.
At first I thought I maybe stumbled across a novel in the vein of The Munsters.
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Was Eleanor the Marilyn? Sadly, there is no humor to be found here at all.
And as much as I caught on that Eleanor was trying very hard to be a character in a Shirley Jackson world that was never going to happen because she couldn't make up her mind who she was. She alternated between “no one loves me” to “I'm special and no one sees it” so often I just started rolling my eyes.
What really ruined this story for me was the character of Arthur. I just want to puke thinking about how useless this whole character is, despite the fact that EVERYONE is physically attracted to him. I couldn't help but think of Gary Oldman in Dracula. Only Dracula actually has a personality.
Le sigh.
I muddled through it, so do the characters.
When we finally get a worthy BIG BAD, I didn't care anymore. But wait, we must go back in time while a ghost fills us in on the backstory we should have had 100 pages ago!
The morale of the story here is that characters need to talk to each other. If everyone had just spoken to Eleanor and explained things, things would not have gone off the rails.
This is one of the most unloving families I've read since the Dollangers.
I still don't understand the mom in the tub. Did she have a name?
And Margaret, who was HAND's DOWN the most interesting character, does not get explored at all. Oh, had the book been from her point of view....