Monday, December 01, 2014

REVIEW: The After House by Michael Phillip Cash

My Rating: 6 out of 10 stars

Remy Galway and her daughter Olivia are rebuilding their life in the small historic town of Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, New York after Remy's divorce. Little do they realize however that one of the house's previous occupants, a whaling boat captain who passed away in 1841, is still lurking... a specter who hasn't been able to find his way to the light. As Remy struggles to put her life back together, will the Captain's presence hinder or help her?

This was an alright read for me. The writing threw me off a bit at the beginning as I found it overly descriptive, particularly of characters as they were introduced, the author recounting details that often had very little to do with the rest of the story. In many cases, I felt it would've been better to leave some of those details out and allow the reader to discover them on their own, if indeed they were necessary. About 17% of the way through (I was reading on my Kindle), things got more interesting with the appearance of the ghost of Captain Eli in Remy and Olivia's life.

I'm not much of a romance reader—I find much of it too corny and cliché for my taste—and unfortunately there were a few romantic scenes between Remy and the local mayor, Hugh, that gave me that same feeling. This and the verbose descriptions were my primary criticisms which detracted from the story for me. But outside of those criticisms, the rest of the story had an interesting premise, and while the ending was a bit predictable, I was still satisfied with how it all turned out.

Thank you to the author and NetGalley for providing me a copy of this e-book in exchange for an honest review.

0 comments: