Midnight is the Darkest Hour - Ashley Winstead

 49%

07.07.24

The fact that the author had to write a really quite long essay at the end to 'explain' things is not a good sign. She insists, for example, that it wasn't that easy for the narrator to just leave town - but it was - it just wouldn't have helped the plot. It really all came down to none of the characters behaving convincingly for their time or place or doing anything an actual person might do. On the plus side, it's not quite as bad as that Crawdads nonsense, even if it was going for its tone - and audience.

House of Hollow - Krystal Sutherland

 44%

21.04.24

Unusual, intriguing, unflinching, atmospheric, carefully plotted... and totally ruined by the (authorial? editorial?) decision for a British narrator, living in London, to use American English. And it wasn't just the extensive US vocabulary - there were references to graduating high school, to teachers 'failing' a student in a subject and to paying health insurance. Why? Again and again, it jarringly brought me out of the story's world. Surely American readers, brought up on Harry Potter, can cope with British English. Or just set it in America - it wouldn't have mattered much to the story. And the author is actually Australian. It made me so angry that I've deducted 20 points from the score it would otherwise have had. That'll teach 'em!

Mexican Gothic - Silvia Moreno-Garcia

 51%

06.08.23

I've struggled with Moreno-Garcia's style before - it feels awkwardly translated even though it was originally written in English. This story was also awkward - "walk through rooms, hallucinate, argue, repeat" with a final few chapters that didn't make sense. Not at all creepy, anyway, and, the colonial point was lost as the baddies could have been any nationality, as long as they were outsiders.

Small Angels - Lauren Owen

 

62%

31.03.23

This could have been cringingly cliched. It was slow, so slow - creating more impatience than psychological tension - and the characters didn't behave like real people, and the introspection about storytelling was rather too meta, but the strong world building, clear sense of place and the fact that there was never any question that supernatural forces were at work made it feel like a surprisingly fresh take on gothic / horror / folklore.

The Silent Companions - Laura Purcell

60%
27.06.18

When I picked this up in Waterstones, three separate booksellers swooped down to convince me of its brilliance. Well, as derivative Gothic horror goes, it's pretty accomplished at ratcheting up the inevitable doom. But the characters, like the sinister 'companions' of the title, are unlikable and two-dimensional, and so much is thrown at the plot that it becomes more creaky than creepy.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle - Shirley Jackson

64%
14.03.17

The idea of reading this was shamelessly stolen from Becks but I'm grateful to her as it would otherwise have passed me by. This grotesque, tragic yet also strangely upbeat novel is a little, twisted treasure that makes me wonder what was really going on within its smug counterpart, 'I Capture the Castle'.