27.08.25
Hugely clichéd, hugely predictable and yet somehow hugely entertaining. I must like a folk horror that's leavened with humour - the light tone at times seemed to battle with the dark atmosphere but that's probably what made it so engaging, despite the uneven pacing.
(Interestingly, this very different but in some ways quite similar book is by the same author, particularly in terms of portraying the female experience.)
This was quite sweet and earnest and it didn't actively annoy me. It was rather unrealistic, of course, and both main characters acted (or not) on assumptions with no evidence to back them up, with the 'baddie' not actually being convincingly bad, at least until he was ramped up at the end. As I read it on my Kindle, so didn't really see the cover, I thought it was written by a woman right up until the acknowledgements, but that probably says more about my assumptions than the story/writing style itself.
