Status Updates From The Haunting of the Lost Ma...

In the prologue there is a live-in nanny named Elizabeth Banks. Later the nanny is changed to be Loretta the great-grandmother of the main character. What?

Hold up...they enter a house that was in a flood described as a wall of water. How it is still standing? How are the windows still in tact? How is the furniture still in place? Clarissa sits on a pillow that’s been under water for 100 years. Ewww. These details aren’t making sense.

Clarissa to Ed: The history of the flood is painful for the descendants of the town. Only one family died but the rest of the people had to leave their belongings behind. It was hard. Don’t talk about the history. Too painful.
Me: blink blink
Clarissa to Ed: I don’t think about the history of this place. It’s a bird sanctuary.
Me: But she just said they all think about the history and it’s painful.

“She wondered in her own mind..” where else do you wonder? Not sure about Clarissa. The characterization is all over the place. Nature person. Hates that the preserve has a history (flooded town beneath the lake). The town came first but she could care less. Annoyed with people who care of sensational history but reads a blog by a history blogger. That’s not a layered character. That’s contradictory. Sigh.

I think it's about to get interesting....

I feel like screaming, "Show, don't tell!" at the author.

Finally some dialogue!

I was expecting an eerie haunted house story, not a dissertation.

"... pandemics have wrought their might" on the first page. This was supposed to be escapist reading, dagnabbit!