 Hello everybody, E here. Welcome back to another book review. Today we are talking about Catherine McCarthy's Immortel. But first, a word from our sponsor. It's weird. It's queer. It's horrifying. It's Eric Ragnon's debut horror collection, Nightmare, Urnings. Eric LaRoca, author of Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke, calls the collection a precious gift that will be guile, mystify, and astound, even the most discerning reader of weird fiction. Within this book are stories of monstrous landlords, terrifying gender reveal parties, and cannibal cooking TV shows. Nightmare, Urnings comes out in e-book and paperback on September 4th. Order on Amazon, or better yet, from the author himself. You can find Eric Ragnon on Twitter at EricRagnon1992. Many thanks to Eric Ragnon for sponsoring this video, now on with the review. Okay, so I want to preface this review by saying it's going to be a negative review. So if the author is watching, maybe don't. I can't tell you what to do, but I will try to be as nice as possible. I have interacted with Catherine on Twitter. We're not friends, not really even acquaintances. Sometimes she pops up in my feed and she has commented on my stuff. In fact, she said, I hope you enjoy my little Gothic horror story when I mentioned I was reading it. Unfortunately, it didn't work for me. Like I said, I'm going to try and be as nice as possible, but there are some things that really got on my nerves and I will explain them now. So the very first thing I want to say is this review, like all of my reviews, is completely subjective. And I want to start with the biggest subjective note, which is I don't like Gothic fiction. I don't like, I don't know, that the haunting of Hill House, we have always lived in the castle, the taming of the shrew, even recently Mexican Gothic, none of those stories worked for me. And I think that's because I just don't like that type of story. So yes, this review is going to be super, super subjective. There were some things in the writing that I'm going to be a little bit nitpicky about. There was a lot of rhyming going on. I don't know if it was intentional, but I marked at least 10 lines that rhymed, where two words spaced equally apart, sounded like each other and it got distracting. I don't know if that was on purpose. I've never read a novel like that. And I don't know, there's something about that that irks me. And that added to my dislike of the reading. Now I'm going to discuss bits of the plot. I'm going to try and keep spoilers out of this. But it is apparent very, very early on who the killer is. There are no twists or turns or anything like that. You know who it is right off the bat. It can only be one person and it is that person. That might be a spoiler. I apologize if it is. But also, there were inconsistencies in the writing and I've mentioned that before. And I think one of the ones that really, really got me was the use of contractions for the majority. Because this book is written in antiquated prose, it is written like it was written in the time period. For the most part, there aren't too many contractions. I do not think it is this, that kind of thing. I have not, instead of haven't, don't, it's. But then every now and again you'll find haven't, don't, and it's. They are very, very few and far between. I don't know. At this point, I wasn't enjoying the read. I was reading it out loud to my wife. So I started becoming nitpicky. We were constantly saying, you know, get on with it, get on with it. And I think a big part of that was I didn't believe in this woman's grief. The story is about a woman who loses her child to a killer. And she spends the rest of the book trying to figure out the killer. And then the last 10 pages or so is an info dump that kind of breaks the rules of the book. We'll get to that in a second. But I did not feel the grief in this story. I did not feel bad for Eleanor. I liked the character of Rowena, but she's there for so short a time that, you know, I know that things had to happen to progress the plot. But when your favorite character in the book is gone very early on in the book, you kind of lose interest. And that's what I did. Now, as far as I feel like I'm tearing this book apart, and I really don't want to, I didn't want to do this review at all. But several of you asked me to do the review because I was reading it. I am going to recommend it to everyone who likes The Haunting of Hill House, Taming of the Shrew. We have always lived in the castle, especially books, recent books like Mexican Gothic. I think you guys would enjoy it. So that's what I'm going to base my review off of is my own subjective opinion. Because I do not like those other books, and I do not like this book for the same reason, then, you know, go maybe read it if you love those other books. Another thing I want to add is almost to the point of comedy, everything that this woman talks about the character Eleanor, everything she talks about that isn't human is anthropomorphized like the the I don't know it got it got silly after a while, and I'm not trying to be rude, but it did you know that the the character would look at a flower and say they had finally come out of their shell because the hurricane worried about hurricane force winds or whatever she would apply her own thoughts. She would anthropomorphize things like flowers like walls like the moon the stars any number thing every it's felt like every single time she mentioned something she was giving it life. I'm not a huge fan of that. I don't I never have been. It's just something that and especially since it's used so often in this one it came off a bit comedic. I would like to end this review by saying I have the utmost respect for Catherine McCarthy. There really is nothing wrong with the book that isn't subjective. I like I said I I want to state that Catherine McCarthy does have talent for words. It's just not I'm not a fan of her style. Would I read future works possibly if they're not gothic literature? Because like I said it's just not working for me and I think I'm going to stay away from it from now on. There's been so few books that I have that I've read that were gothic horror and this seems to focus more on I don't know it and I should love it but it's like more on atmosphere but the atmosphere here was missing for me but even when the atmosphere works in a gothic story I tend not to like it either and I'm a huge fan of atmosphere so I don't know what's going on here but I read it out loud to my wife. My wife did not like it either. In fact she said several times just get to the point and now I need to talk about one spoiler that was a it's a massive spoiler. I'm going to be talking about the end of the book and the rules that the rules that the book sets up that don't make any sense. So in three, two, one, spoilers. Okay so throughout the entire book none of the ghosts speak to Eleanor. None of them say a single word. The only time that we hear and this is a problem I'll get to in just a second. The only time we hear of a ghost talking is when Mangu talks to Rowena about there's something bad coming. Now the first thing I want to note there is Mangu had been dead for a while and Rowena was able to talk to her. That's a problem because at the last bit of the book, unless I read something completely wrong, at the last bit of the book it's mentioned that Kerry's one of the dead girls that the the father Kendrick killed after Rowena, she gives this massive info dump talking after she's already died and she says that she she only has in a lot of time. What are the rules for the time frame with these ghosts? Because if Mangu was able to come and talk to Rowena why in the world so long after her death, why in the world was Kerry's in such a rush? Also Kerry's was in a rush but she comes back three, four times to tell her story and the entire time that we're sitting there that I'm reading to my wife this massive info dump it's 10 pages long it's literally monologuing but not from the villain it's from the victim and Kerry's is telling her whole story and it just goes on and on and on with so much unneeded information or at least at this point in time it felt like unneeded information because we were tired of reading about it. But there issues why was she able to talk so much why didn't any of the other ghosts talk because we could have found out what happened with the boat captain we could have found out so many different things and we don't get any of that but all of a sudden this talkative ghost comes in and Kerry and then Kerry's and she's talking for the next 10 pages and then we get to the final page and it just wraps up so quickly. Another inconsistency with the writing is the first two-thirds of the book are very very verbose very very thick language thick language but later on toward the end it felt like Catherine got tired of writing the story and went to a short choppy sentences. There was one paragraph that I read that each after like the first two sentences each other sentence had exactly like three or four words in it very short boom boom boom boom boom. I might have liked the book more had the book been written like that to begin with maybe maybe not I don't know I think it was just a story overall I didn't like but to have that that rush there at the end with a monologuing for 10 pages is just the height of boredom and I didn't like anything about it. But have you read Immortel by Catherine McCarthy? I would love to hear why you liked it if you didn't like it any of those things but let me know why you didn't like it or why you loved it so that we can have a discussion down there in the doobly-doo. Again I'm sorry this is the first miss for me from Off Limits Press I got the book for free for review but they can't all be winners I think I want to stick on that no way am I saying I'm never going to read Catherine McCarthy or an Off Limits Press book again just that this one this one especially didn't work for me um but if you've read it please tell me what you thought of it down there in the doobly-doo but until next time I have been a you have been you this has been another book review I'll talk to you guys later bye