This was a book that I really wanted to like. The opening prologue was really strong and promising, but unfortunately there were too many things that held this back from being an enjoyable novel. The first was the writing style, which I generally don’t think worked. It was meandering and not at all tight. It was also overly long. Horror works best in a shorter form, making it more hard hitting with chills. The longer it goes, the less effective horror generally is. In this case, there were long stretches of not a whole lot going on. This book could have used some serious editing and reduction in length.
Another issue was the characterization. By and large, I didn’t find the characters to either be compelling or easy to root for. The worse character was Maddie, the main character’s mom. Whenever she was on the page, I had a strong urge to forward past that section. Finally, the longer the story went, the more convoluted the plot became, supporting my thought that this book was too long.
On the plus side, there were some interesting concepts in this novel, and the prologue was good. Other than that, there is not much that I can offer as far as positives in this novel. Therefore, I would recommend skipping this one.
