My Rating – 1 ½ Stars
I received this book for free from Netgalley on behalf of Atria Books in exchange for a fair review.
I know what the summary tells you what this story is supposed to be about, however after reading it I can say that this book was about nothing. I was pretty disappointed because it sounds like a creepy
ghost story and who doesn’t like a good ghost story?
This was definitely not a creepy ghost story. The ghost part of the story doesn’t start until halfway through the book and by that time I was skimming. The book is mostly about the textile industry in the 1800s and how successful this man made this family business.
When William Bellman was ten years old, he shot a rook with a slingshot and killed it. This rook was a descendent of Odin’s crows and this led to William being cursed. Only he doesn’t know it. He actually grows up and has an amazing life.
He’s a pretty great guy actually; smart, handsome and hardworking. Even though he is an outcast from the Bellman family, his uncle takes him under his wing and he is on his way to owning the Bellman family mill.
One problem, everyone around him dies. One by one his family and friends start to die in (generally) sudden ways. Most of the time he doesn’t think anything of it because the cans death can be years apart and aren’t entirely unexplainable. But then there is a sickness and he quickly loses all his children, save one, and his wife within weeks of each other. When his last surviving child is on the brink of death, he makes a deal with a mysterious stranger to save her.
And that folks…is all she wrote.
Okay not really but it felt like it. This book was unfortunately very boring. It took me two weeks just to get to 50%. It’s just a rundown of his life. Every chapter went like this “he did this and was successful and then someone he knows died.” I didn’t really care about any of the characters that passed because you don’t get to know them.
The story was very slow and never really picked up for me. The rook thing got old fast, as they were mentioned in like every single chapter.
Nothing happens in this book! I do not recommend.
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