Thursday, September 29, 2011

DARK SOULS review.

 Goodreads description:

   
Welcome to York, England.
Mist lingers in the streets.
Narrow buildings cast long shadows.
This is the most haunted city in the world. . . .

Miranda Tennant arrives in York with a terrible, tragic secret. She is eager to lose herself amid the quaint cobblestones, hoping she won't run into the countless ghosts who supposedly roam the city. . . .

Then she meets Nick, an intense, dark-eyed boy who knows all of York's hidden places and histories. Miranda wonders if Nick is falling for her, but she is distracted by another boy -- one even more handsome and mysterious than Nick. He lives in the house across from Miranda and seems desperate to send her some sort of message. Could this boy be one of York's haunted souls?

Soon, Miranda realizes that something dangerous -- and deadly -- is being planned. And she may have to face the darkest part of herself in order to unravel the mystery -- and find redemption.

Okay, so this review will be a little confusing. I put four stars (on Goodreads), because I will say that I really enjoyed reading this book and tell everyone that it is worth reading. I loved the setting, the characters and the premise. It is a clean-read, very very little swearing, no sexual stuff, nothing gory.

The thing is, the writing wasn't quite as strong as I would have guessed from someone who claims to have so much experience in the field and is teaching creative writing to college students. It reads more like a debut.

If you are looking for Horror (which this is classified as), you won't be scared. You'll be interested enough to turn pages, yes, scared no. Another thing I wish she would have done was making this a closer 3rd person narrative. At the beginning I was slightly confused as to who the MC was (of course that could have been entirely due to the fact that I've been reading so many first person narratives of late).

The parents names and the teens names were also too close related for my taste. There wasn't any obvious separation of generation, so I was consistently trying to remember who the dad was vs. the brother. Even to the end of the story. And she called each parent by their first name instead of saying Mom or Dad. (This may seem like a small thing, but it was a little confusing to me).

Also, I think the story could have moved ahead a lot faster and been more intense. The story line or MC struggle didn't become apparent to me until almost the very end of the book. At that point this sounded more like a mystery than a thriller and the clues, etc. should have been instituted earlier on in the story. (Or more of them should have been added, more questions raised at the beginning).

All that said, I still enjoyed reading this book. Ms. Morris has a lot of potential, even if she isn't a polished writer yet. As I said before, the atmosphere was superb. Her descriptions came just where they should have and were delightful. I really liked the relationship between Miranda and her brother. It was believable and you cared about the struggles they went through. I LOVE that it was set in England (having been there myself and loving every minute of my visit!), a great location for a ghost story if there ever was one.


So, go out and read the book, and don't forget about my challenge of writing your own CORNY HALLOWEEN JOKE! Entries still accepted. Please post them in the previous post dedicated to the Corny Joke Contest. Come on, you know you want to. And what a great exercise in creativity people! (Just humor me, okay?)

Thanks. Knew you would. You're the best readers ever. Not so good in the commenting dept., but hey, neither am I!

1 comment:

Natalie Aguirre said...

Thanks for the honest review. Not sure I'm too excited about this one.