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inkandplasma 's review for:
The Ghost Tree
by Christina Henry
Full review available on my blog on October 12th: https://inkandplasma.com/2020/10/12/the-ghost-tree/
Trigger Warnings: racism, slurs, murder, gore, violence, underage sex (incl. off-page sex between a minor and an adult presented as consensual), 18 year old dating a 14 year old presented as consensual, fatphobia, slutshaming.
Thanks to Titan Books for the eARC of this book, it has not affected my honest review.
This one started a little slower than other Christina Henry books I've read, but there was a particular chapter that took it from zero to 100 and after that I was hooked. There was something kind of thriller-like about this book, and I really enjoyed the way that I knew more than the characters did and could piece things together from each POV. This was far more thriller-horror than it was scary-horror, which I really enjoyed. I was watching things unfold slowly and with only a little extreme fear that something horrible was going to happen to Lauren, our wonderful fourteen year old protagonist who has a penchant for wandering into the woods to try and solve gory murders.
I really loved Lauren. She wasn't our only POV, there were chapters from several different characters including: Alex, a cop who hasn't been in town very long; Lauren's mother; Miranda; the mayor and other supporting characters. It gave an interesting and fleshed out view of what was happening, which made the plot so much clearer than it would have been from Lauren's limited perspective. I think that worked really well, but Lauren and David were absolutely my favourites. The balance of maturity and childishness was done really well and between her crises on her appearance, her period and her development in comparison to other girls her age, I genuinely felt like she read like a fourteen year old going through trauma.
How*ever* I refuse to not comment on the romance in this book. It's not much of a romance, because Lauren is a few weeks away from her fifteenth birthday and far too busy trying not to get murdered, but the fact that a fourteen year old girl went on a date with an eighteen year old man in this book and that *wasn't* presented as a problem truly grossed me out. I hated it. She's a child, he's an adult. It didn't play any role in the story that couldn't have been done by him being, for example, sixteen, and it would have been significantly less icky. There is actually a different instance of a grown adult and a child having "consensual" sex in this book (using quotation marks because it's NOT consensual, she is a CHILD), but while that's identified as being a problem, everyone is just fine with Lauren going on a date with a grown man. I really hated it.
Overall though, this was a great book with a really interesting cast of characters and a plot that genuinely had me guessing on how the hell it was ever going to be resolved. Christina Henry definitely stays on my insta-buy author list.
Trigger Warnings: racism, slurs, murder, gore, violence, underage sex (incl. off-page sex between a minor and an adult presented as consensual), 18 year old dating a 14 year old presented as consensual, fatphobia, slutshaming.
Thanks to Titan Books for the eARC of this book, it has not affected my honest review.
This one started a little slower than other Christina Henry books I've read, but there was a particular chapter that took it from zero to 100 and after that I was hooked. There was something kind of thriller-like about this book, and I really enjoyed the way that I knew more than the characters did and could piece things together from each POV. This was far more thriller-horror than it was scary-horror, which I really enjoyed. I was watching things unfold slowly and with only a little extreme fear that something horrible was going to happen to Lauren, our wonderful fourteen year old protagonist who has a penchant for wandering into the woods to try and solve gory murders.
I really loved Lauren. She wasn't our only POV, there were chapters from several different characters including: Alex, a cop who hasn't been in town very long; Lauren's mother; Miranda; the mayor and other supporting characters. It gave an interesting and fleshed out view of what was happening, which made the plot so much clearer than it would have been from Lauren's limited perspective. I think that worked really well, but Lauren and David were absolutely my favourites. The balance of maturity and childishness was done really well and between her crises on her appearance, her period and her development in comparison to other girls her age, I genuinely felt like she read like a fourteen year old going through trauma.
How*ever* I refuse to not comment on the romance in this book. It's not much of a romance, because Lauren is a few weeks away from her fifteenth birthday and far too busy trying not to get murdered, but the fact that a fourteen year old girl went on a date with an eighteen year old man in this book and that *wasn't* presented as a problem truly grossed me out. I hated it. She's a child, he's an adult. It didn't play any role in the story that couldn't have been done by him being, for example, sixteen, and it would have been significantly less icky. There is actually a different instance of a grown adult and a child having "consensual" sex in this book (using quotation marks because it's NOT consensual, she is a CHILD), but while that's identified as being a problem, everyone is just fine with Lauren going on a date with a grown man. I really hated it.
Overall though, this was a great book with a really interesting cast of characters and a plot that genuinely had me guessing on how the hell it was ever going to be resolved. Christina Henry definitely stays on my insta-buy author list.