Elaine White's Life in Books
The Author
Elaine White is the author of multi-genre MM romance, celebrating 'love is love' and offering diversity in both genre and character within her stories.
Growing up in a small town and fighting cancer in her early teens taught her that life is short and dreams should be pursued. She lives vicariously through her independent, and often hellion characters, exploring all possibilities within the romantic universe.
The Winner of two Watty Awards – Collector's Dream (An Unpredictable Life) and Hidden Gem (Faithfully) – and an Honourable Mention in 2016's Rainbow Awards (A Royal Craving) Elaine is a self-professed geek, reading addict, and a romantic at heart.
The Reviewer
I’m an author and reader, who just can’t get away from books. I discovered the MM genre a few years ago and became addicted.
Top #50 UK reviewer on Goodreads
#1 reviewer on Divine Magazine
White
Book – WhiteAuthor – Tim Lebbon
Star rating - ★★☆☆☆
No. of Pages – 62
Cover – Creepy!
POV – 1st person, past tense
Would I read it again – No
Genre – Horror, Novella, Fiction
** COPY RECEIVED THROUGH NETGALLEY **
Maybe I'm insane or maybe what I just read was rubbish, I can't decide. What I do know is that I just read a story about apocalypse, death, victims snowed in, and murder and I wasn't once a) frightened b) scared c) concerned or d) all that bothered about who lived or died.
Let me keep it simple:
It had a brilliant opening line - “We found the first body two days before Christmas.” but that was the best thing about it. Chapter 1 was a whole 21% of the story. The ENTIRE story fit into 49% of the book I read! I don't just feel disappointed, I feel cheated. Why the heck would anyone waste 51% of a book with an excerpt of another book?????? Please explain this to me, because I DON'T. GET. IT!
I'm not a fan of 1st person POV in the first place and this one really reminds me why. We see nothing about the main character that isn't thought by himself. We don't even know his name. Ever. In the whole story it was “I” and no name. And there are so much flashbacks as thinking back to things that have happened before.
There were serious editing issues and I see nothing here that tells me it's an unedited/unformatted document. Either way, if this has even been LOOKED at by the author, after writing it, then it shouldn't have these mistakes, unless it's a formatting issue. I'm talking about words running into each other, gaps between paragraphs that are not scene breaks, and a whole lot of other grammar issues.
Honestly, I was bored. It didn't have that 'horror' impact I was hoping for. There wasn't much going on that scared me or that was psychologically frightening. In a way, it reminded me more of Agatha Christie's “Ten Little Indians” film adaptation, that anything that might represent horror. And that ending? Seriously? That's how you end a psychological horror story? It was abrupt, bordered on lazy and I really don't appreciate that there wasn't a single attempt at explanation or resolution to the “why” or the “how”.
