Mandrake

by J. Edward Lord | Horror |
ISBN: 0345350812 Global Overview for this book
Registered by wingGoryDetailswing of Nashua, New Hampshire USA on 1/9/2017
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This book is in the wild! This Book is Currently in the Wild!
1 journaler for this copy...
Journal Entry 1 by wingGoryDetailswing from Nashua, New Hampshire USA on Monday, January 9, 2017
I found this slightly-battered paperback at the Lucky Dog thrift shop in Nashua NH. It has a creepy premise involving a house that's haunted and/or cursed due to some dark deeds in previous generations, but while there were some interesting - and horrifying - aspects, I found that it fell a bit flat for me by the end. The story unfolds asynchronously, with the timeline switching from the 1880s to the 1860s to modern times, sometimes in mid-chapter; I have read books where this method was used effectively to provide a slow reveal as to what's really going on, and that's more or less how it's used here, but I found it less suspenseful and more confusing than it needed to be.

I was also rather distressed to find that a young girl, born into a dysfuntional family, has a tendency to do terrible things to small animals - possibly out of naive ignorance, yet it was painful to read about.

I liked the entombed-in-the-wall bits, but was less happy about the final paragraphs, which revealed the location of the main villain's long-lost gold - revealed to the reader, though none of the surviving characters figured it out. I hadn't been especially interested in that myself, and found it wasted as the tag-line of the book, but perhaps others would be darkly amused at that scene!

Released 7 yrs ago (2/3/2017 UTC) at Little Free Library, Benson Park - 19 Kimball Hill Rd in Hudson, New Hampshire USA

WILD RELEASE NOTES:

I left this book in the Little Free Library at around 2; hope the finder enjoys it!

[See other recent releases in NH here.]

*** Released for the 2017 Great Backyard Bird Count release challenge; see the GBBC page here. ***

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