17.03.26
I enjoy Alice Bell's idiosyncratic and effervescent style of storytelling so much that I was uncharacteristically willing to pay more than 99p for the ebook. Yet the little asides and esoteric cultural references, and even the relentless Britishness of it all, quickly become confusing and, ultimately, irritating, to the extent that this reads like a parody of her previous books. Another novel that would have benefited from another edit and proofread before publishing.
60%
10.02.26A fun and thoughtful high-school supernatural thriller that leaned into the ridiculous horror tropes while also tackling the universal desire to belong. It could have been developed a little more - there were parts that needed more (and others that needed less) focus, and the protagonist didn't really have enough conflict, but generally it was engaging and mostly unpredictable.
12.07.24
Something about this series is really engaging. Is it the effusive and well-placed swearing? Yes. Is it the eccentric British humour? Yes. Is it the surprisingly complex dynamic between the main character and the ghost that haunts her? Yes. Admittedly, this was rougher round the edges than Grave Expectations (and needed another proofread - but thanks to the author for acknowledging our work anyway) but it's basically just uncomplicated fun.
This modern classic was spectacularly (spectre-cularly?) well written on a line level, a model for using different techniques to create atmosphere, which explains its presence on Eng Lit reading lists. But the pace and the story itself didn't match that poetry. It wasn't particularly scary and only slightly creepy. And it never was clear why the woman wanted to get her revenge on random people. She just did. I suppose ghosts don't need to explain themselves.
This was never going to be high literature or deeply poetic but it was a fun, funny and well written update of the supernatural murder mystery genre - the realistic volume of swearing and a non-binary character could upset die-hard (ha!) cosy mystery fans but it worked for me. It did wander a bit in the middle (as did the main character - it's always best to focus on one location in stories like this) but, overall, it was dead good (ha again!).
17.11.22
A ghost who can't communicate or interact - what an unusual idea. Well, there's a reason for that. A protagonist with no agency doesn't make for a great story, and so it depended on rather drawn-out flashbacks to her life. There were some other promising ideas here too but overall it was far too slow, over-researched and unnecessarily complicated for them to be fully explored. And at the end it seemed that (spoiler!) there was no link between the two deaths after all. Another draft needed!
I did like it being set in Peterborough, though - an underrated city I'm vaguely familiar with.
