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Fellside by M. R Carey
Oct. 12th, 2016 11:07 pmThe 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.
( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )
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.
( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )
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.
