The Blackhouse - Carol Johnstone
Release Date: Jan. 3, 2023
She read
As a young child, Maggie MacKay declared she was Andrew MacNeil and had been murdered in a small village in the Hebrides. Her mother, along with a documentary filmmaker, visited there when she was five to investigate, to no avail. Twenty five years later, she returns to the village to try to find out just who Andrew was and what happened to him. Here, she finds friendship, antagonism, love, and danger. The story is told in two POVs with two timelines.
Extremely atmospheric, Johnstone portrays the beauty and the isolation of the Hebrides, as well as the violence of the storms and sea. I know I am going to be in a minority here, but, despite it being well written, I just couldn’t engage with this book. Reading it for me was tedious. I frequently found myself skimming through, and not because I was anxious to find out what happened. There were moments of great wisdom expressed that made me pause and say “this is really good.” Unfortunately, those moments were overwhelmed by tedium. Gothic, haunting, touching on the supernatural, there were some important issues and information here, but sometimes there was just too much.
Thanks to #netgalley and #scribner for the ARC
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