Ellen Allen Writes

This is a hard one to review. I'm not sure what I think...

I bought this at a reduced price for 99 cents at the beginning of September because I'd read a few articles about how great it was. I started it almost immediately and couldn't get past the first sentence for about two weeks. Then I returned to it in October and tried again but only got as far as Chapter 2. This week, I decided to clear my bookshelf of all my "crud" and ploughed on through... only to find that once I forced myself, I actually quite liked it. That said, I can't give anything more than 3 stars if it took me nearly 3 months and a twist of the arm to read it.

Not much happens in the story and I never mind that much in literary novels, except this isn't a literary novel. So you get the slow pace without the absolutely exceptional writing (don't get me wrong, the writing is very good just not good enough to really affect me, nothing to set me alight...) I was invested in the characters and I wanted to know what happened but I didn't really mind when bad things happened to anyone. I'm a bit non-committal about the whole thing. Maybe it's because it feels like it's set in the past when it's actually set in the future.

So, my conclusion? I'm in for her next novel, absolutely. And I promise not to take 3 months to read it. I just hope I like it a little bit more ...