Moorehead Manor

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
I’ve been a fan of horror since I was a kid, so I was looking forward to reading this story, and I really liked it.

CONS:
– Sometimes the writing was telling too much rather than showing.
– There were a few errors in the book.
– At parts it might have spent a too much time describing the scenery, but this is something that I can easily see other people having no problem with. It wasn’t so bad that it took me out of the story.
– There were also a few places where taking out a word would have helped the flow. For example:
“Actually, the more he thought about it, the angrier he got.”
I think “The more he thought about it the angrier he got.” would have sounded better. This is something challenging for a lot of writers, including myself, as we try to make things clearer with more words and end up dulling the effect of the overall sentence.
– I didn’t mind this myself, but there is a bloody scene that involves the death of an infant. It’s short, but some people might want to avoid the book if this would bother them.

PROS:
– The story itself was pretty good. I found it clever in spots, like when Emily used the baby doll to summon Alice’s ghost.
– I also liked that not everything in the house was sinister. Alice was neutral; a wandering spirit in need of closure.
– Even though I mentioned the writing before, I’ll mention it again here. There were parts where I really enjoyed the writing, such as:
“The dust came alive as soon as they walked across the flooring.”

I could practically see the dust swirling up around their feet.

– I thought the characters were likeable. The horror genre is often riddled with characters who lack depth, but that wasn’t true here. While it’s a short story so there’s a limit to what can be done, I liked four of the characters, including Alice. Characters, including the antagonist, acted in a way that made sense for them.
– The romance fit with the age of the characters and I felt very satisfied with the end. I was happy it ended with holding hands. There was a sweetness and innocence to that I found more appealing than a kiss would have.

All in all, I enjoyed this read. It all came together well. The book was up for free on Smashwords, so I’d say anyone who is interested should go ahead and give it a look.

I’d give it a 8/10.

Gone for a Soldier

I received a copy of this book for free in exchange for an honest review.

I love men in military uniforms. This book is filled with them, so it had all the makings of a book I would enjoy.

Starting off I think the thing that made it the hardest for me to get into was how many people there were. In the first chapters new characters were constantly popping up and it was hard to keep track of them all.

I liked Johanna and Lucy. The way Johanna was sneaky about playing an active role instead of a passive role was refreshing. I enjoyed Rose, as well, but she unfortunately didn’t get much of a role in the latter half of the book (understandably so since she wouldn’t have a place near a battlefield). I also liked Captain Colvill. I don’t know why, I just did.

The story was pretty good. I did enjoy the main character, and I found Johanna refreshing at times.

In the beginning I think some parts were too heavy-handed. It seemed like things that happened to pertain to Lucy’s predicament came up too often, even from people who had no idea who she was. I would have liked more subtle things, such as when one of the underage soldiers was called out and Lucy had been afraid it was her they were coming for.

I liked that characters that Lucy and the others weren’t fond of weren’t always portrayed in a negative light. Other times I thought the main characters had a slightly too modern mindset. In one particular scene they were seeing a play. The main character and the people with her felt offended by the play’s contents while everyone else in the theater was amused. It took me out of the scene to have a few characters that the story happened to be about and make them stick out so much. It’s not that I feel they shouldn’t be offended; it was more, “In the entire place why are they the only enlightened ones?” It would have felt less awkward to me if when Lucy looked around she had perhaps spotted a few other people who weren’t fond of the performance, either, even just one or two in the crowd.

As a main character I didn’t mind following Lucy and I appreciated that I couldn’t predict right away who her love interest would be. The majority of the time I had no problem with her, but every once in awhile she did something that irritated me. For example, towards the end they had no way to bring in more food, so they killed two of the horses for food. Lucy wouldn’t eat it knowing where it came from. When you have hundreds of people who are starving and constantly being shot and killed, I thought eating horse meat was an odd thing to get worked up over. It would be better to me if she thought of Soldier, which would give her a more personal reason to not eat it.
It was also at the end that her romance with Dr. Walsh bothered me the most. Sometimes it was perfectly fine and understandable – of course she would want to know if he was alive or not, and she’d be worried if she didn’t see him.
But there were other moments when she was bothered because she couldn’t be alone with him. My only thoughts were, “You’re being shot at. There’s dismembered limbs everywhere and dying men lying all over the place. You can hang out with him later. More pressing things should be on your mind.”
I’d have understood it better if she wanted to be with him for reasons other than romance. Like, if she was having trouble dealing with the mental strain and just wanted a moment to have some extra support.

To be perfectly honest, I rooted more for Johanna and Lucy to get together than Lucy and Jack. No matter how much the book insisted I just didn’t see the sparks between her and Jack. I think the insistence that they were so in love actually worked against convincing me. I’d have preferred it to be more subdued, or even changed a bit. Instead of wanting so badly to simply hold him, it could have been more relevant to her situation. She could have wanted to be with him somewhere safe and warm with an actual bed, rather than out in the cold, sleeping on the ground with gunfire all around.

As a whole the story was quite good. Characters were likeable. I enjoyed O’Meara’s introduction, drunkenly taunting the enemy, as well as some of the stories that went with O’Meara, even though he was more of a background character. As I mentioned before, I liked Johanna. She was stubborn and had a lot of ambition, and at the same time was trapped in a time where she was only allowed to do so much. Her eventual love interest played over fine with me.

I think this book could use an editor. I don’t say that because it’s a bad book; I actually say that because I think it’s a good book, and I think it could be a great book with some editing. It’s a very long book and I think a lot of it could be trimmed down or reworded to have a greater impact. There were also some grammar problems – most of which weren’t frequent enough to be distracting – as well as times that things got confusing.
One example I could think of was this:
“…it didn’t take long for the two young Minnesota soldiers to wind up in jail.”
My first thought was, “Wait, how did they go from wandering around town to being arrested?” It turned out, however, that they’d gone to visit their friend in jail.

Another time I can think of was when two paragraphs in a row that ended with “Especially saloons.”

An experienced editor could easily fix things like this, as well trim down some of the verbose parts, or root out bits of information that might not have been needed for the story. There were several times where it seemed the story announced someone was sick just to declare a few paragraphs later they were over their sickness now, and the illness didn’t change anything in the story. It could be that the author was going through factual information and put it in, but I don’t think every mention was necessary.

However, like I mentioned above, I do think this is a good story that has the makings of a great story. I’d love to see an editor get their hands on it.

I’d give it a 9/10. I’m impressed with the work the author put into this.

(Note: The author has updated the book since I reviewed it.)