Not for me

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dhammelef Avatar

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I decided to venture outside my comfort zone and try a YA scary book (I'm not into books with gore or violence if it's graphic). This one sounded like the one to start with as haunted houses and ghosts have always intrigued me. This book was a quick read, but I had to force myself to continue on after about half way through because it just bored me. I'm struggling to rate this book even as high as a 3 star, but it did have somethings I liked:

1) The author created a setting that immediately set the foreboding and dark mood of this book and made the setting come alive as a character itself in the story: "Hendricks turned her head and saw a building on the other side of the street, hunching low to the ground, like a predator." "Current weather: twenty-two degrees and gray. Gray like the sky was sucking the life from its surroundings...."

2) Most of the descriptive writing was well done. The author added many sensory details--sights, sounds, textures, smells, and tastes--throughout the entire book.

What I didn't like:

1) the stereotypical characters

2) the insta-love

3) lack of deeper motivations for the characters as to why they made their choices. If this book was longer, and showed me more meaningful interaction between the characters, I think it may have been better and made me care about them.

4) mundane, everyday stuff dragged the pacing

5) the ending--so unbelievable it pulled me totally out of this world and I just didn't care what had just happened. Will keep it spoiler free here.