Author: Lisa Unger
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Rating: WARTY!
DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review. The chance to read a new novel is reward aplenty!
Today I'm reviewing a pair of short stories (actually novelettes, but they felt like short stories, being short and a fast read!) by Lisa Unger, The Whispers and The Burning Girl, which is a kind of a sequel to the first. Both of these were rather unsatisfactory in that they had no real ending, although the first The Whispers) was an acceptable read. This one, The Burning Girl was not, and I'll tell you why here.
Let me just say right up front that I don't believe in the supernatural - not any of it - because there is no actual real evidence for any supernatural things or events, whereas there's ample evidence of people's endless capacity for self-delusion. I do love a good story about those things though, if it's told well, and has some interesting characters and events.
I don't normally talk about book covers because this blog is about writing, not fancy dress, and the author typically has nothing whatsoever to do with the cover (unless they wisely self-publish), but what we have here is yet another case of a cover designer designing a cover without, evidently, having the first clue what the story is about! I must congratulate Big Publishing™ once again for showing how royally they can screw-up a book!
The woman on the cover appears to be the same model who was on the cover of the first in this trilogy, but this second novelette is set ten years on and Eloise is ten years older and has more mileage weighing her down than is good for anyone, yet none of this is represented on the cover! The 'burning girl' is a young girl in the story, not a "smokin' babe" which is clearly what's being aimed for on this cover (in that background image), so the cover is a major disaster which misrepresents the story shamefully.
But the cover is nothing when all is said and done. It's the writing that's important, and the writing here is all about Eloise Montgomery. I call it a "kind of sequel" because it's set ten years after The Whispers, and really has nothing to do with the first story. Yes, it's the same character, and yes, she still has a surviving daughter and a friend who used to be a cop, and she still gets visions, but this story seemed so disconnected from the first that it may as well have been a different story. It also really doesn't involve anyone but Eloise, and it's pretty much all about how badly done-to she feels.
Eloise is essentially wallowing in her misery throughout the story, and that wasn't even remotely appealing to me. She's even weaker and less engaging here than she was in the first story, which I found to be an acceptable read. In this story, she's falling apart and whiny. It's all "me" all the time and it's tedious. There's nothing to attract a reader to her, and everything to repulse one.
She's letting herself go - and by that I don't mean in the typically accepted idea of failing to dress nice or to put on make-up (I couldn't care less about that in a character), but in that she's simply not taking care of herself and has no interests at all outside of her obsession with this one vision she keeps having - which ultimately goes nowhere. It's like Eloise has no interest in life and no motivation, and this left me with no interest in her, and no motivation to read about her, but the fact that she was an entirely unappealing character wasn't even the worst part of it!
The worst part was that the title is completely misleading. It's very dramatic, yes, but completely misleading. The burning girl is a vision Eloise has, and it keeps returning and getting worse, and worse, and more and more feisty, and then it completely fizzles with no actual resolution.
If you count Eloise letting it go, then yes, there was a resolution, but if, as a writer, you title your story 'The Burning Girl' and obsess on this character throughout it, building and building upon it, and then simply wave it away at the end like it's really nothing, then what do you have, really? Nothing. There is no resolution. If Arthur Doyle had simply ended The Hound of the Baskervilles without revealing what the hound was or who was behind it all, but had Holmes simply say, oh let's not fuss over it, would you consider that a classic? I sure wouldn't. But that's exactly what the author does here.
Or are we expected to accept that the entire second novelette is actually nothing more than a huge teaser for the third installment, where the burning girl issue is resolved at last? I don't know, and I certainly have no intention of reading any more because I really don't care anymore. The publisher was right in chanting: "a spellbinding story that will leave you wanting more". The reason you want more is because you've been cheated of an ending.
