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Thursday, August 2, 2012

Book Review: The Unquiet by Jeannine Garsee

Title: The Unquiet

Author: Jeannine Garsee

Publisher: Bloomsbury

Publication Date: July 2012

Genre: Young Adult Fiction/Ghost Story

Series or Stand Alone: Stand Alone

Synopsis can be found here.
NetGalley review.

Review:

Corrine, Rinn to her friends, moves with her mom to her mom's hometown after a traumatic event. Rinn is bipolar and has just suffered a huge loss in her life. But an eerie prescence grips this town. The tunnel under the school may be haunted, because a girl drowned in the school's swimming pool. And Rinn has just moved into that girl's old house.
Is she imagining the strange happenings going on? Or is something more sinister at work?

I so wanted to like this book, but I couldn't get into it.
I gave it over 100 pages (134 to be accurate) and while I am sure there may be a great payoff at the end, I couldn't bring myself to continue.
Rinn is not a likeable character. I can stand the usual angry teenager routine, but many of Rinn's outbursts seem unfounded. Her love interest, Nate, has little personality and I didn't believe the chemistry between them at all. He's a "farmer's boy" and every conversation does well to remind the reader of that. Rinn's friends are flat, mean girls. I didn't understand why they all wanted to hang out with each other, let alone why I was hanging out with them by reading about them!

The most interesting one yet?
Annaliese, the ghost, who still hadn't shown up by the time I put the book down.
There were some scary bits, especially when a group of them are in the tunnel performing a seance. But it didn't scare me enough to want to keep reading. And I'm a chicken! when it comes to scary stories.

Unfortunately, this one left me feeling empty.

Rating: 3 Raisins, No Thank You!

3 comments:

  1. raisins? oh no! i know what you mean though when you can't get into a book and you just don't care about the characters. that's the worst. too bad because i kind of like the cover to this one.

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  2. I recently read thw whole book, and in the process of writing a review for a school project, but I agree with you! This book was good, but no matter how hard I tried I couldn't get into it. Some moments were really good, and I couldn't wait to find out the meaning behind it! But then when I did...I felt empty. This book just doesn't have what it takes to fill in the wanted hole for a good mystery.

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    Replies
    1. Agreed! I really wanted to like it too! Thanks for reading!

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