Barbara L.B. Storey

I am still not entirely sure what to say about this book. Let me be clear - I KNEW it was not going to be anything like Harry Potter. I was very excited to read something else by her, to see what else she could do.

Having said that, the best thing I can say about this book (and I'm hiding the review for now, since a couple of friends have still to read it) is that JK Rowling remains a great storyteller. She creates vivid characters, intricate plot lines, and tells a thumping good tale.

However - this tale is relentlessly, unremittingly, almost mind-numbingly ugly, full of sad, bitter, damaged, unlikeable characters. Not a one of them is truly sympathetic (well, maybe one teenage girl, Sukhvinder Jawanda, but she is still a highly damaged young girl), all of them have horrendous character flaws and exert extremely negative influences on those around them, and the two towns in which the book is placed are both festering cess pools of all that is worst about humanity.

I also wondered if JK Rowling didn't go a bit overboard in kicking off the traces of having written seven "children's books" in a row - the language, the adult situations, all of them grubby or furtive or just plain wrong, morally and legally, are a bit overdone in places.

Despite her skill as a storyteller, I almost gave up on the book a third of the way in, thinking it was just too . . . ugly, and I'd wait for her next one, thanks. But it did get a bit better, and her skill at weaving in elements that had been dropped into the story as she went along did pull me in, make me want to know how it was all going to end. Even though it was obvious a MILE away that what happened, was going to happen. It was just a question of who.

I wanted to give the book 4 stars, but in the end, went with three, because honestly, the book was all about the worst of human nature, and a true tragedy, and I just wasn't expecting that. Maybe if I had been, I'd have liked it more.