Review: 2.5
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 05 24, 2014
Love and Loss (the Coven of Secrets)by Trinity Ambrose2.5 StarsAfter being left orphaned in a car accident, Josephine’s first experience of seeing the dead was as her parents said goodbye to her at the scene of the crash. Growing up wasn’t easy for her, she suffered with her ‘affliction’, and found herself moved around from foster home to foster home, until finally she was accepted at Mama D’s with all the other ‘hard to place’ children. As an adult she could still see ghosts but wasn’t able to communicate with them effectively, until one night she was visited by her parents who had come with a warning of things to come. It is at the beginning of her vacation with friends, Damien Sarah and Steve that the trouble begins. Evil spirits and nightmares from the past show themselves and turn their journey into a living hell.This was an interesting enough book, with ghosts witchcraft and magic, good vs evil and all that, but there was something missing in the writing for me. I failed to be drawn in enough to be horrified when bad things happened. For example, I’m petrified of spiders and creepy crawlies of all kinds, so when the group were in the motel and there were spiders and maggots I really should have been squirming in my seat, but I wasn’t. It was told in such a mechanical way that I felt no emotion in that scene at all, which was rather disappointing for me. I needed more to be able to connect, there was too much telling and not enough showing. More dialogue would have given the characters depth as we would have been able to get a better impression of their personality and I would have been more invested in the story and in what happened to the characters.We are left at a point in the story where we need to continue the series in order to see the outcome for one of the main characters. Most people know I’m not a fan of cliffhangers but if I’m honest I doubt the fate of this character will playon my mind much past tomorrow, or if I’ll remember him at all by the time the next instalment is released.Copy supplied for an honest review