DNF
Genre: Paranormal, Mystery/Thriller, Romance
This RITA® Reader Challenge 2017 review was written by Samantha D. This story was nominated for the RITA® in the Paranormal Romance category.
The summary:
All Aubrey Ellis wants is a normal life, one that doesn’t include desperate pleas from the dead. Her remarkable gift may help others rest in peace, but it also made for an unsettling childhood and destroyed her marriage. Finally content as the real estate writer for a local newspaper, Aubrey keeps her extraordinary ability hidden—until she is unexpectedly assigned the story of a decades-old murder.
Rocked by the discovery of a young woman’s skeletal remains, the New England town of Surrey wants answers. Hard-nosed investigative reporter Levi St John is determined to get them. Aubrey has no choice but to get involved, even at the terrifying risk of stirring spirits connected to a dead woman’s demise and piquing her new reporting partner’s suspicions.
As Aubrey and Levi delve further into the mystery, secrets are revealed and passion ignites. It seems that Aubrey’s ghost gifts are poised to deliver everything but a normal life.
Here is Samantha D.'s review:
I really wanted to have a great review for you all. I bought Ghost Gifts by Laura Spinella on May 8th, right after signing up to review. 3,349 people thought it was pretty good – it has an average of 4.5 stars on Amazon. Give the book a try! Really, you probably will like it. I however, did not.
I thought about admitting my failure to Amanda at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. Telling her that I just didn’t have the time to finish the book. But I did have time. In fact, in the last week I read the new Ilona Andrews, Lorraine Heath, and Julia Quinn releases. Despite going back to Ghost Gifts about 100 times in the last month, it didn’t work for me, and here’s why:
When I decided to abandon reading literature for genre fiction after graduate school, I stopped thinking about how books were written. I generally felt like they either “sucked me in” or didn’t. The writing in Ghost Gifts was so strangely, haltingly, weird and formal that I simply didn’t believe any of the characters were people or care about the story. A quarter of the way in I started highlighting all of the weird turns of phrase so that I could include them in this review. Some of my favorites include:
“Pa?” Aubrey inched back. The word hit her ears with a whisper of déjà vu.
“Pa. It’s an upper-class British term for father.”
Is it though? And she couldn’t recognize the word “Pa”?
As Aubrey and Levi are newspaper reporters, it might make sense that they speak in a very formal way. Maybe Aubrey’s mind just works in a different way then mine.
Everything surrounding Levi came with a sense of heavy lifting. He proved her right, continuing with weighty facts before her bottom could make contact with the chair.
There are endless examples of this, where I stop and think, what does this even mean? Is this a dad-joke type pun in the place of character description?
Throughout the book, the sky is “cornflower” and Aubrey drove “west into a waning sun” and I got another glass of wine and set my book down, realizing that this was just not going to work for me.
It might work for you though! A lot of people really liked it. I feel a bit bad for even submitting a negative review focusing on writing style, which a lot of people could breeze right through or might even like. But, if you’re like me and couldn’t get past a cornflower blue sky, maybe this is a good one to skip.
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YOU AREN’T ALONE. I picked this up when it was a freebie and I nearly threw it across the room. It is emphatically NOT THE BOOK FOR ME oh dear god.
So Little House on the Prairie doesn’t exist in the world of this book, I guess?
“When I decided to abandon reading literature for genre fiction after graduate school, I stopped thinking about how books were written. I generally felt like they either “sucked me in” or didn’t.”
This! Oh, this!
I’m sorry, in what world is “Pa” a British upper class term for father. I’m wracking my brain for a literary or film reference, an like @cbackson, LHOTP is the only and distinctly non-stop British one that comes to mind.
Don’t feel bad Samantha, yours is not the first dnf review, lord help us, it won’t be the last.
Yeah, I’m thinking “Father” is the British upper class term for father. “Pater” if you went to public school.
Whereas “Pa” is the hillbilly term for father. (I can say that because my dad was born in West Virginia.)
fwiw I think a writing style that you hate is a perfectly valid reason for DNFing and for giving a negative review.
And +1 on stopping “literature” after grad school. LOL
Pa is a term for Father in the UK in upper class families. I knew someone who when we met would ask me how my Ma and Pa were! Granted it is not very common.
Those weird writing examples would definitely pull me out of the story.
I’m showing my age here, but my first exposure to the term “Pa” was probably watching Ma and Pa Kettle movies on TV, followed a few years later by the Beverly Hillbillies. That’s about as far away from upper class British as you can get.
@C.F. – hah! I was going to highlight that passage too! So true.
Generally if I notice the writing it means I’m not into the story or the writing style is really clunky or stylized or something.
I’m so happy that I’m not the only one who thought of Little House on the Prairie! I’ve always thought that Pa was sort of a hillbillyish term, it’s what we call my grandfather and we’re about as far from being upper class Brits as it’s possible to be. I thought that snooty British term was papa a la Downtown Abbey.
Oh, painful prose just pulls me straight out of a story. And it’s especially frustrating when the book WOULD be good if the author knew how to put words together – I remember reading a book when I was about 13 which was wildly imaginative and funny but the sentences and paragraphs were atrocious. Said-bookisms everywhere – every line of dialogue was tagged with a “he hooted mysteriously” or “she babbled spitefully” or some such. I remember even at 13 I thought the author needed either a collaborator with a better ear or a ruthless editor.
I think she might be thinking of ‘Papa’ (emphasis on the second syllable) which is fairly upper class English for father. But the upper classes would never abbreviate to ‘pa’! Tch. Perish the thought!
I’m glad you submitted your DNF review, Samantha – it’s so interesting to get different takes on things I’ve read. I did the other RITA Challenge review for this, and I do agree with you on the formality of their dialogue (I found it sometimes dry, sometimes aloof). But the metaphors and descriptors actually worked for me. 🙂
I think I’ve heard “country” Brits use “Pa” (TV series set in Yorkshire or southwest coast of England, maybe?).
I can completely sympathize with the reviewer as I had to force myself to finish reading the book I reviewed for the Rita reader challenge review. I kept reading other books in between chapters and then coming back and trying to read it again. Not to be a broken record, but I just keep wondering how do these books end up being nominated as the BEST in their genres? Is our taste just wonky? Is it us or them? Lol.
Rural English dialects are more likely to go for “Da” rather than “Pa” (though I’ve heard Pa for grandfather). Ma and Pa is very posh – it’s diminutive for mater and pater. Try saying it with really long As, and maybe throw a couple of Us and Os in there, to get the posh pronounciation (whereas rural is a very short A). We’re talking single sex boarding school, run in a set with at least two titled friends, everything they own is older than American independence because buying things with money is what commoners do, dahling, posh.
Da is northern dialect. Pa would be more Southern. ‘Pa and Ma’ is not posh, any longer, in a serious way. You might ask after someone’s Ma and Pa, but it’s mostly tongue in cheek or joky. You wouldn’t call them Ma and Pa. Very posh people call their parents Mummy and Daddy, even when they’re 40.
People using Ma and Pa in day to day speech to their parents is working class Northern, in general.
I’m British – I’m not guessing.
Prince Charles calls the Queen Mummy, not Ma. As do the rest of the Eton grads with their parents. Mama and Papa (Mamaaah and Papaaah, not Mamma and Pappa) maybe, at a push.