Stephen > Recent Status Updates

I like, I’m enjoying it I guess and I will finish it but it’s also sooooo obnoxious

Much to like here, some great characters - Robin is my favourite overall strangely despite not being part of the core group - and you have a troll who loves Love Island, what’s not to like. Some repulsive characters too, Donna chief amongst them. I do find the book rather too long overall tho. Joe Hill captures the UK perfectly such that I wonder if he’s ever lived here, too uncanny to just be research.

There are a lot of questions for this book. Ethan is clearly EJ but how does Tricia not recognise his voice from the tapes? How convenient is it that Tricia immediately found a secret book to unlock the secret room? How is it that Tricia just automatically managed to find the specific tapes that are most able to tell the true story? The holes in this thing are unbelievable.

I’m impressed with the sheer complexity of the plot given this was only the author’s second novel.

My complaint about the first book in this series was that you found out next to nothing about the titular character. The author goes some way to rectifying that in this book but, I don’t know, something’s still not quite there, it still just feels like a sketch of a character.

Chapter 48: Beatriz to Maia: “I’ve never stopped thinking about you”. Is that why you spent the first 600 pages of the book refusing to see her?

Thought this was going to be some sort of elaborate fantasy but it’s not, it’s a melodramatic period romance which really isn’t my kind of thing but I’m keeping reading in anticipation of the big twist at the end I keep hearing about (already pretty sure that’ll be a disappointment). Hard to see myself continuing with the series after this book…it all rather hinges on that twist I think…