The Story:
When Alex Bishop meets Madigan Sargood again after twelve years apart, everything changes. His childhood sweetheart is beautiful and impulsive, but there is something wrong with her. Something dangerous. Then she commits suicide. Now Alex can't get Madigan out of his head. Is it all in his mind, or is she communicating with him. To save himself and those he loves, Alex must uncover the sinister reason why Madigan took her own life - and why she won't lie still in her grave.
My Thoughts:
If there's one lesson to be learned from my Aussie Author Challenge, it's that there are many books out there which aggravate me to boiling point, but I will finish reading them if the writing is compelling enough. This is the posterbook for stories in that category. Once again, due to NaNoWriMo, this is going to be a listy review.
Things I liked:
- The writing is amazing. Almost lyrical and very descriptive.
- The plot is unpredictable. Even though the blurb says there's paranormal stuff happening, it just didn't feel like a PN book for the first 1/3 so I really wasn't expecting it to get so dark.
- No storybook endings. This is a like and dislike of mine. I can't decide exactly where this one goes.
- There aren't any cliched characters and everyone is quite distinct.
- There aren't any cliched characters and everyone is quite distinct.
Things I didn't like:
- No Characters I actually liked: Huge problem with the titular character. Am forever off the name Madigan. Sorry to all the Madigan's out there. I just have OCD word association. I think she was meant to be portrayed as attractive and enigmatic enough to incite obsession but I just felt she was a manipulative, spoiled, rich cow. The narrator Alex didn't do much for me either. If he were a love interest, I would resign him to the weak, whingey, pathetic man category. Not a good formula.
-The ending to this didn't feel like it resolved anything. I don't think there's going to be a sequel so I would have liked to see a more concrete ending (although, I suppose in life there are no smooth endings).
All in all, despite the things I didn't like about this book, the writing and the plot twists kept me interested enough and I was still thinking about this one after I was finished reading which is a good sign.
All in all, despite the things I didn't like about this book, the writing and the plot twists kept me interested enough and I was still thinking about this one after I was finished reading which is a good sign.
The Rating:
