Get 👏 A 👏 Better👏 Proofreader!!!
Meh, what to say about this sorry excuse for a novel.
The writing in this story is so juvenile it reads more like a YA tale. The author clearly struggled with trying to convey the personality and feelings of young people. The protagonist reads more like a lecherous old dude than a young man living in modern day London.
Don’t get me wrong, I loved the premise of this, a series of “unfortunate events” shall we say at the Goth Festival in Whitby; eerie, spooky, mischievous. Nope! The execution of the writing put paid to that quite quickly.
The pacing is way off, with some sections going painfully slow and then others feel terribly rushed, so that you struggle to keep up with what’s happening. The characters feel caricature like, the black lad is all “Bomba Claat, I’m Ital, smoke weed innit”, the obese rich dude with the expensive car barely gets a mention other than to set him up as a majorly twatty individual who gets his just desserts. The girls are like carbon copies of each other, all messaging each other “OMG, no way, totally, whatevs”!
The format of the chapters is also weird, with some written as normal dialogue, some as text messages, some as e-mails (and what even is the utter shite spouted by a supposed forensic pathologist??!! Just no Vassie!)
The descriptive elements are the most bizarre :-
“in that vast darkness, I’d be as exposed as a luminous prawn floating in the Marianna (sic) Trench”
“the back of the house was like the face of a dementia patient, a wide sandstone surface as blank as a sheet of paper”!!!!!! (WTAF??!)
“A narrow passage led to a low barn that like smelled like I imagine cows must smell. Sweet veggie farts, like boiled easy cook rice in a wet nappy” (Again, WTAF??!!)
Honestly! This is the reason why I thought it read more like a YA book.
And don’t get me started on the spelling and grammatical mistakes! Does injini Press not hire proof readers at all?? I was convinced at one point this was a self-published, print off Amazon type jobbie, so bad were the errors.
The story is basically just a modern day telling of Dracula with a few thrash metal bands and steampunk thrown in. It is basic, rudimentary and undeveloped.
This was a major disappointment for me. I couldn’t recommend it all if I’m honest. Poor poor show that was 400 pages too long! 1 star.