Fellside by M. R Carey
Oct. 12th, 2016 11:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
You will find Fellside somewhere on the edge of the Yorkshire moors. It is not the kind of place you’d want to end up, but it’s where Jess Moulson could be spending the rest of her life.
It’s a place where even the walls whisper. And one voice belongs to a little boy with a message for Jess. Fellside will be the death of you – if it doesn’t save you.
Jess Moulson is a drug addict and convicted murderer. She was found guilty of starting a fire in her flat that left her lover, John Street, with serious burns to his hands but killed Alex, a 10-year-old boy who lived next door. Jess was high on the night of the fire and doesn’t remember what she did, but the trial’s left her in no doubt as to her culpability (despite the best efforts of her solicitors who think she has a good defence) and she’s already working on starving herself to death when she’s moved to Fellside (a private prison in a remote location on the Yorkshire moors).
But Jess’s plans come undone when she has a vision of Alex’s ghost, who seems to be stuck between worlds. She discovers an ability to walk in dreams and works with Alex to try and work out what happened to him, but as she regains hope she finds herself pitched into machinations of the general prison and up against Harriet Grace, the prisoner who controls everything that goes on and who has definite plans for Jess …
M. R. Carey’s novel is BAD GIRLS meets THE SIXTH SENSE, mixing horror and dark fantasy in a story about guilt and redemption that shows great imagination but has a soap opera feel with some of the twists a little too easy to guess, which ultimately makes for an okay read but not a great one. For me, the biggest issue with the book is Jess as I found her difficult to empathise with as she is so full of self-pity. All her actions in the book are about her – the decision to starve herself to death is because she can’t cope with the guilt, her decision to help Alex is because it offers a chance of redemption – and that made it difficult for me to care. I also found the prison set up to be incredibly cliché, from the corrupt prison guards to Harriet Grace’s crime empire (which isn’t helped by the fact that Grace is thinly characterised) and some of the twists that come in the story are telegraphed far too early. I did like Jess’s journeys into dreamland and the relationship that develops between her and Alex but ultimately this didn’t work as well for me as Carey’s other books and while it’s an okay read, it’s not a great one.
The Verdict:
M. R. Carey’s novel is BAD GIRLS meets THE SIXTH SENSE, mixing horror and dark fantasy in a story about guilt and redemption that shows great imagination but has a soap opera feel with some of the twists a little too easy to guess, which ultimately makes for an okay read but not a great one. For me, the biggest issue with the book is Jess as I found her difficult to empathise with as she is so full of self-pity. All her actions in the book are about her – the decision to starve herself to death is because she can’t cope with the guilt, her decision to help Alex is because it offers a chance of redemption – and that made it difficult for me to care. I also found the prison set up to be incredibly cliché, from the corrupt prison guards to Harriet Grace’s crime empire (which isn’t helped by the fact that Grace is thinly characterised) and some of the twists that come in the story are telegraphed far too early. I did like Jess’s journeys into dreamland and the relationship that develops between her and Alex but ultimately this didn’t work as well for me as Carey’s other books and while it’s an okay read, it’s not a great one.
You will find Fellside somewhere on the edge of the Yorkshire moors. It is not the kind of place you’d want to end up, but it’s where Jess Moulson could be spending the rest of her life.
It’s a place where even the walls whisper. And one voice belongs to a little boy with a message for Jess. Fellside will be the death of you – if it doesn’t save you.
Jess Moulson is a drug addict and convicted murderer. She was found guilty of starting a fire in her flat that left her lover, John Street, with serious burns to his hands but killed Alex, a 10-year-old boy who lived next door. Jess was high on the night of the fire and doesn’t remember what she did, but the trial’s left her in no doubt as to her culpability (despite the best efforts of her solicitors who think she has a good defence) and she’s already working on starving herself to death when she’s moved to Fellside (a private prison in a remote location on the Yorkshire moors).
But Jess’s plans come undone when she has a vision of Alex’s ghost, who seems to be stuck between worlds. She discovers an ability to walk in dreams and works with Alex to try and work out what happened to him, but as she regains hope she finds herself pitched into machinations of the general prison and up against Harriet Grace, the prisoner who controls everything that goes on and who has definite plans for Jess …
M. R. Carey’s novel is BAD GIRLS meets THE SIXTH SENSE, mixing horror and dark fantasy in a story about guilt and redemption that shows great imagination but has a soap opera feel with some of the twists a little too easy to guess, which ultimately makes for an okay read but not a great one. For me, the biggest issue with the book is Jess as I found her difficult to empathise with as she is so full of self-pity. All her actions in the book are about her – the decision to starve herself to death is because she can’t cope with the guilt, her decision to help Alex is because it offers a chance of redemption – and that made it difficult for me to care. I also found the prison set up to be incredibly cliché, from the corrupt prison guards to Harriet Grace’s crime empire (which isn’t helped by the fact that Grace is thinly characterised) and some of the twists that come in the story are telegraphed far too early. I did like Jess’s journeys into dreamland and the relationship that develops between her and Alex but ultimately this didn’t work as well for me as Carey’s other books and while it’s an okay read, it’s not a great one.
The Verdict:
M. R. Carey’s novel is BAD GIRLS meets THE SIXTH SENSE, mixing horror and dark fantasy in a story about guilt and redemption that shows great imagination but has a soap opera feel with some of the twists a little too easy to guess, which ultimately makes for an okay read but not a great one. For me, the biggest issue with the book is Jess as I found her difficult to empathise with as she is so full of self-pity. All her actions in the book are about her – the decision to starve herself to death is because she can’t cope with the guilt, her decision to help Alex is because it offers a chance of redemption – and that made it difficult for me to care. I also found the prison set up to be incredibly cliché, from the corrupt prison guards to Harriet Grace’s crime empire (which isn’t helped by the fact that Grace is thinly characterised) and some of the twists that come in the story are telegraphed far too early. I did like Jess’s journeys into dreamland and the relationship that develops between her and Alex but ultimately this didn’t work as well for me as Carey’s other books and while it’s an okay read, it’s not a great one.
