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alithomas 's review for:
We Have Always Lived in the Castle
by Shirley Jackson
The good:
The first-person narrator's voice was really unique and interesting. All the characters were interesting, honestly. For some people this might be enough to make it worth the read.
The prose is lovely.
The bad:
I'm not sure what this was? Not really a whodunit because it's obvious pretty early. Not spooky or thriller-y or haunting like I was hoping. I didn't get that intense, uneasy build-up I expect from story like this. Nothing much happens that you don't expect to happen and the few things that do happen feel cliché, so even if you weren't necessarily expecting them they aren't interesting. For me, the plot felt very flat and anticlimactic, even in the midst of what was meant to be a very tense climax.
The first-person narrator's voice was really unique and interesting. All the characters were interesting, honestly. For some people this might be enough to make it worth the read.
The prose is lovely.
The bad:
I'm not sure what this was? Not really a whodunit because it's obvious pretty early. Not spooky or thriller-y or haunting like I was hoping. I didn't get that intense, uneasy build-up I expect from story like this. Nothing much happens that you don't expect to happen and the few things that do happen feel cliché, so even if you weren't necessarily expecting them they aren't interesting. For me, the plot felt very flat and anticlimactic, even in the midst of what was meant to be a very tense climax.