Monday, January 16, 2012

The Wedding Gift by Kathleen McKenna

SynopsisLeann wasn't good enough for her upper-crust in-laws, so they gave her the mansion none of them wanted. Years ago, something or someone in the house killed Leann's brother. Will its violent secrets kill her next?

Review: I received this book from Net Galley in exchange for a review. I have to admit the first thing that intrigued me about the book was the title, and I'm not entirely sure why. The thing that drew me to this book was not just the title though, it was the fact it sounded like a bit of mystery. I really do enjoy mysteries, but my first and true love is the paranormal/supernatural so it sounded like this book was going to be a perfect mix of the two genres.

That being said there were things I liked and things I didn't like, and they ended up pretty much canceling each other out. So I am going to start out with the things I liked about the book. I really enjoyed that general plot of the story, I think that while it is not a completely unique concept it worked really well in the book. I think part of the reason I liked the plot and concept was because the writing wasn't bad. 

I was also really intrigued by the history of both the house and the family, I myself am a big lover of history. I toyed for many years if I wanted to go into English and Literature or History. So any story that has a good history that spans generations is interesting for me. I also have to say that McKenna did a really good job at the historical part of the book. When she references the historical aspects she does it in this great flashbacks that were very well thought out. 

Now the big thing that hurt the book in my opinion was Leann. I prefer in most books that I connect with the main character. That doesn't mean I have to always agree with what the character does but I should be able to connect to them in a manner that allows me to pull for them or at least understand why they were having the emotions they were having. Now there have been a few books where I have no connected to the character that I still liked because I was able to understand them. Unfortunately for this book I neither connected with Leanna nor understood her. I found her to be mostly self-involved and because the book was told from her point of view, I often found that she drowned out scenes that should have had more impact then they did.  

For me I think this book had a lot of promise but just didn't live up to it. The plot was good, and could have been a pretty good book, but Leann overwhelms this book so completely that by the time I was at the end I wasn't really all that interested, instead I was more annoyed than anything. That being said, this is of course my opinion and I am sure this book has an audience that might enjoy this book, so if you are looking for a supernatural mystery with some history built in maybe you should try out this book, you may enjoy it more than I did. 


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