Shruti morethanmylupus's Reviews > The Tale of Halcyon Crane

This book seems to aspire to the Gothic genre. It falls short.

Oh what to say about this book? The writing is mediocre. The "mystery" is obvious pretty close to the beginning of the book.

The narrator, Hallie, failed to elicit any feelings of compassion in me, and I really didn't identify with her at all. The book is full of stereotypical characters that I suspect are meant to be quirky or mysterious or something. Maybe they would have been if Webb ever developed them, but alas she didn't so they passed in and out of the pages without making much of an impact. Hallie basically has to be told everything by the all-knowing housekeeper, rather than figuring it out for herself. The housekeeper, incidentally, feels like a slightly nicer rip off of Rebecca's Mrs. Danvers.

I found myself reacting to the revelations with more of a "Duh. No kidding." than a shocked gasp. The phrasing in the book didn't convince me that Hallie was all that scared. It's supposed to be a scary story - but why should I be scared if the main character isn't scared herself? Webb is a non-fiction writer and it shows. Everything is spelled out instead of alluded to. The attempts at foreshadowing are so obvious that she might as well have just said "Oh hey, just so you know,____ is going to happen next!" She attempts metaphors, but they fall flat. It feels like she is trying far to hard to put them into the book.

The resolution was nothing short of ridiculous. (Yes, it was so ridiculous that I needed to start a new paragraph just to say so.)