Restless Spectres

Clara, who can see ghosts, inherits property from an aunt she didn't know existed and moves there only to find an evil presence...

So I'll just say it upfront, I just didn't like the writing in this one. Everything is told in this annoying way where you're always being told what's happening but never shown. It's like in other books where they ask a character for a story and they relate what happened, but for two hundred and seventy-six pages. It was frustrating.

With both dialogue and what was going on, it was done in these long rambling run-on sentences that make my own look short and to the point. I would often get confused about whether it was a character talking or not because it was all written the same way.

Clara's power to see ghosts is really just sorta there, and just gives her more characters to talk to really. She never encounters other violent ghosts before moving to the castle and even helps some of them move on to their ‘lights'. A person who can see ghosts, but never finding one before who was harmful, who was also invisible to her, was a good premise but it wasn't done well in my opinion here. The author also tips their hand far too early blurting out what was going on and I'm not sure if that was done on purpose or not.

There is also so much time devoted to fixing up the property, which Clara constantly calls her castle. It really becomes tiresome hearing her go on and on about which rooms and blah blah, there's an evil force here lady, who cares!? Get on with it! Even after shes attacked for the first time she just shuts the door and goes back to rambling on about her CASTLE and only finally brings in a team of “ghost huntery people” to do something about it at the very end of the far too long book.

There's a lot of dialogue between Clara and her friend Julie, and her eventually romantic partner Rodan. This also takes forever to develop into anything and it takes away from the ghost stuff. I'm sure someone would find it cute, but it did nothing for me. Clara isn't a terrible character, she'd be even likable if perhaps this were written differently. She has a few good moments with a ghost child early on, but otherwise, she seems silly ignoring the room Suite 6 and going on and on and on about the work needing done on the place. I love character work, I didn't love it here.

With so little descriptive words going into the story, you're left with just she did this, he did that, and this happened and I'm going to tell you exactly why and leave nothing to the imagination. What little describing the scenery was done on the clutter in the castle, of course. It does FINALLY get pretty violent and crazy towards the end, but it was a lot of work to get there, and I was so tired of it I didn't really care anymore. Adding in that annoying ending which I'm not sure the point of was, I only finished this because I force myself to complete every book I start.

I don't take any pleasure in leaving bad reviews for lesser-known authors with little to no other reviews on their works, but I'm an honest person and I found this to be not very good, and cannot recommend it.