#TuesdayBookBlog What Haunts Me by Margaret Millmore #Paranormal #RBRT

#BookReview What Haunts Me by Margaret Millmore #RBRT

Author: Margaret Millmore

Category: Paranormal

My Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Review:

George recovers from the flu but finds that he is now able to see the ghosts that haunt people and make them ill. He discovers that he has a skill for killing these creatures and healing the sick person that was being haunted. He is aptly called the ghost killer. As the book progresses, we unearth that this skill has been present since George was a child but he had repressed the memories – until now.

I love the hook in the opening paragraph of this book – ‘Have you ever had one of those dreams that haunted you in your waking hours? Those surreal movies of the subconscious, playing out in your head while you sleep, so detailed and vivid that when you woke, you couldn’t be sure if it was just a dream or a long lost memory…’

The idea of a ghost killer who can harm (and be harmed) by ghostly apparitions is promising, unfortunately, for me, What Haunts Me fell a bit flat after that opening page. I couldn’t connect to George at all and was only able to see him as dull and boring. I did like Billy as her character was fun and feisty.

The story is told from George’s point of view and reads like a diary at times which made it difficult for me to bond with the character. I felt there were far too many sentences starting with ‘I’ -I told him/I couldn’t tell/I rounded/I had six weeks.

For the first eight chapters, there were only four lines of dialogue and this huge bulk of prose caused me to struggle when reading. I kept putting it down and turning to something else. It would benefit the novel greatly, and help move the story forward if the characters spoke. There are numerous situations where dialogue would have built a clearer picture of George, but a lengthy paragraph was used instead, for example; ‘That’s why I wasn’t surprised when my boss called me into his office. He went straight to the point…what was wrong with me? Knowing that the real answer wasn’t appropriate, I told him I had personal issues…’

Great idea for a story as I love paranormal books but What Haunts Me wasn’t the engaging read I had hoped it would be. Far too much telling rather showing.

I received a copy of this book as part of Rosie Amber’s Book Review Team in exchange for an honest review.

Blurb:

Can something be killed if already dead?

After a bad bout of the flu, George is plagued by strange dreams — nighttime visions of ghosts who wander among the living and infect their victims with deformity and disease. A deeply buried instinct emerges: he can kill these monsters and heal their victims.

Haunted by suppressed memories, George’s sanity begins to slip away as he becomes consumed with his new responsibility. This dark and dangerous path will lead to new friends and allies, and enemies George never could have imagined.

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