The Taylor family shatters in a single night when two teenage siblings are found dead in their own home. The only surviving sibling, Vincent, never shakes the whispers and accusations that he was the one who killed them. Decades later, the legend only grows as his career as a horror writer skyrockets.
Ghostwriter Olivia Dumont has spent her entire professional life hiding the fact that she is the only child of Vincent Taylor. Now on the brink of financial ruin, she's offered a job to ghostwrite her father's last book. What she doesn't know, though, is that this project is another one of his lies. Because it's not another horror novel he wants her to write.
After fifty years of silence, Vincent Taylor is finally ready to talk about what really happened that night in 1975. (Pub Date: Jun 03 2025)
3+
This is a book with ups and downs, but it was in general a refreshing read.
Olivia fell in disgrace in her career as a ghostwriter so when the offer from famous mystery writer Vincent Taylor comes to write his next book for him, she must accept. Even though he's actually the substance-abuser, neglectful parent who shipped her to a boarding school in Europe and never looked back. However, when she gets there, she finds out the book is a memoir to tell the public what he never told the police about how his two siblings died decades before. Only, his memory isn't the same, so it is Olivia's just to piece it all together.
The book is basically from Olivia's perspective, with a couple of chapters written from other character's, which are actually chapters from the book she is writing. So we have a narrator that is far from being trusted because she's also trying to find out the truth. I think this setup was the gem in this book. I love how we can't trust her father one bit but we're still willing to. The whole time I had no reason to trust him but I wanted to believe in him.
However, I think this book was very wordy. There were parts my mind flew away because of the superfluous narration. I may be a bad judge though. Still, I think there was a lot of cleaning that could be done to make the read more dynamic.
The other thing that got to me was the ending. The story in the ending itself was fine; it was even a good closing to all the questions raised. My problem was with the way it's shown. I'm sure the writer was going for that: show don't tell. But this made me confused about what was on the book the main character is writing and what was something for us real readers. and the answer, I could just conclude after reading what made more sense. It wasn't my favorite experience.
The backstory, however, is enticing. This is a tasty read for the summer, for sure.
Honest review based on an ARC provided by Netgalley. Many thanks to the publisher for this opportunity.
Rating: 3 out of 5.
No comments:
Post a Comment