AUTHOR: Ellen Ashe
PUBLISHER: Forbidden Publications
LENGTH: Novella (roughly 40k)
GENRE: Paranormal romantic suspense
COST: $4.99
Leena has the Sight, which has only gotten more acute since a bad car accident a year ago. When her fiancé Colin takes her to Calloway Cove to meet his estranged father, she gets caught up in the sight of a ghostly woman with blood on her hands. The legend of the Seagrass Whore captivates both her and her future father-in-law, even more so when it looks like the old love story about a woman falling in love with her husband’s father might be repeating itself. Together, they try and free the ghost's soul, and at the same time, save their own.
The cover of this book captivated me. It was haunting and sensual, and though the title and excerpt threw me a little, I decided to try it anyway. I thought it might be worth trying something a little offbeat for a change. Offbeat is probably the best way to describe this in the end.
The prose is…uneven. That’s probably the best word. There are sections where it’s very lyrical and flows well enough to suck me in. Then there are sections where it feels like reading a grade school primer. I don’t know if this is the author’s style since this is the first title of hers I’ve read, but it almost seems like she’s trying to obtain a haunting voice to match her haunting subject matter. If that’s the case, it only worked for me half the time.
The other half, I was too busy trying to figure out what was going on. Characterization is all over the place. Most scenes – especially between Leena and Cole, the father – have such a dizzying array of emotions that I can never tell what the scene’s true intent really is. I really liked Cole in the beginning; the author set him from the start to be this great anti-hero. By the time the real meat of the story hit, however, I started wondering what was going on with him. It doesn't help that the writing suffers in some of the more intimate scenes; I've never seen a hero purr so much that wasn't a shapeshifter. That feeling only got worse throughout the climax when it felt like Cole was saying one thing, doing another, and thinking something completely different, none of which was meshing or explaining the other. It climaxes with the very last scene of the book, which I refuse to spoil, but I walked away from the story unconvinced it was a happy ever after, or even a happy for now.
I really liked the idea of mirroring the tragic events of the Seagrass Whore with the triangle of Colin/Cole/Leena, but ultimately, it didn’t work for me. I had nobody to connect with, or respect, or even empathize a little for. Colin is trashed from nearly the get-go, while Leena and Cole suffer from behavior that borders on unstable. Maybe that was the point. I’m not sure. But I don’t buy escapist fiction to spend hours afterward wondering what I had just read. I buy it to get sucked into the story. I’ll settle for getting sucked into the haunting cover of this for now.
| Readability | 7/10 – Lyrical prose gets hindered by poor pacing and inconsistent characterization |
| Hero | 5/10 – Compelling for the first half, then falls apart with ambiguities |
| Heroine | 4/10 – Other than her Sight, I never know much about her, and if the ambiguous ending means what I think it does, I have even less respect for her. |
| Entertainment value | 5/10 – A fascinating concept fails on follow-thru |
| World building | 4/10 – In spite of interesting prose and some interesting ideas, the details fill in the wrong kind of holes and leave me trying to imagine what’s going on. |
| TOTAL: | 25/50 |
3 comments:
Will the sequel be the The Seaman's Slut? I mean naming your book for a whore sorta kills the romantic part of the deal.
I read this book, although some areas were confusing the book as a whole was awesome. are you sure you read the same book as me?
Every reader is different. What works for one, doesn't for another.
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