2 Stars
Lakebridge Spring has been tagged as Horror fiction,
Literary fiction, Literary thriller,
Lovecraftian (Whatever that is!) and Stephen King. I have to
be honest I have never read Stephen King and have no idea how this compares to
his writing or his genre. I cannot tell you what this book is about or what
genre it fits into because I really don’t know. I half read half listened to
this book and even though I’m finished I still cannot write a synopsis. The
only thing I can tell you, is that apparently the town is cursed especially the
‘counter girls’ and it’s something to do with the Lakebridge!
This book was not an easy read for me! By the end I still
hadn’t found the real point of the story and if I’m honest I think it was the
following 118 word sentence, with only one comma that lost me when I almost
turned blue trying to read it! ‘For that matter, it was not the result of
some deranged local hermit who lived in a
forest shack somewhere in the vicinity of the bridge and ate venison
when he could find it or his own
stockpile of homemade maple syrup created from his great-grandfather’s recipe which allowed for a bit of
fermentation giving the syrup a little
kick when applied to the buttermilk pancakes he would make from boxes of
mix he stored in the shed next to the
gallon upon gallon of red paint that he would
secret out to the Lakebridge every spring just after the thaw and
repaint it and coat it to protect it
from the up coming year’s wear and weather.’ Yep there are no laws against
long sentences and punctuation is an aid to understanding and not respiration
but….HELLO 115 words with no pause? Even I can’t speak for that long without
drawing breath!
The writing style was definitely not my usual preferred
read, it took up too much brain power trying to decipher and TBH a lot of the
content was just plain boring slowing the pace drastically. I found the
repetitive prose annoying. i.e. The phrase ‘Paul Bennington of the
Bennington Sandersons’ was said eight times in one paragraph, twice in one
sentence… though there were 71 words in that one sentence!!
It was just too full of waffle with too long sentences and
took too long to get to the actual point…. Maybe that was the point! I
don’t know, it went way above my head!
So there must be something positive I can say, well the
author certainly likes to make sure you know what she is telling you. If she’s
talking about a ‘Vectra’ you will not
forget it, if she’s talking about ‘the counter girl’ you will not forget ……
why?…. Because she will say it over and over and over until it’s imprinted on
your brain for ever!…. There are people out there who think this book is
fantastic but I just don’t get it, if you’re looking for an easy entertaining
read with an interesting and varied vocabulary, keep looking because this is
not it!
Copy supplied for review.
Even taking a very big breath and talking fast (which I do very well) I couldn't get through that sentence lol.
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