Review: Could have been so much better... (possible spoilers)
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 03 20, 2014
To start with - I'd give the series 2.5 stars if it was possible... And be warned: there may be some spoilers below:DWell, I finished the whole thing (including part 4 bought separately) just to find out how it will end... finally. The idea behind the book was quite interesting, but the execution failed, unfortunately. There were times when I was so irritated by the main character's behaviour that I almost put the book down... I understand that Meghan is just 16 when she dies but all the same... all her "doubts" and "hesitations" seem too artificial, even for a teenager in love (my 16-year-old niece who sometimes is a real pain in the... has never pissed me off as much as Meghan in "Afterlife"... and that's saying a lot...) And then she "grows" (meaning "gets older") throughout the series - she should get a little more mature with time. But... well, some dreams never get fulfilled...OK, so what is it exactly I DISLIKED so much about the whole series?1) The plot and the character development. I had a feeling all the time that I was reading some of my students' works - the type of a paper in which they are to write a story and not being able to execute the task satisfactorily (not having any great ideas for what should happen to the characters or which way the plotline should go) they start dragging on and on and on on unnecessary details and descriptions... To explain what I mean exactly: there are a lot of instances in the story where the characters TALK about how they are feeling right then and there, but the author gives us too little to SHOW that they actually ARE feeling the way they describe it... They TALK about danger but I - as the reader - don't feel that danger at all... I would rather they talked less and did more.2) The language. Again, it felt like reading high school students' prose - the average ones', to be more precise.  And the fact that - again - the writer TELLS us things instead of SHOWING them. Meghan repeats all the time that Mick uses such charming, dated form of English - and not once in the story did I feel he was from another time... And I'm not even a native speaker of English:) But I've read my Shakespeare, Scott, or Fitzgerald to know the difference between modern English and English from a century or two ago... No such differentiation in the book, alas!So is there anything I liked? Yes. Some of the ideas of what spirits can do, some of the conversations the main characters have... some bits and pieces here and there... definitely too little to enjoy the book the way I had expected to when I first bough it... What a pity...