Note that this is not a series but a serial. You get the first few chapters for free and then pay for the next instalments individually. If you're going to pull that trick on a reader you need to be up front about it from the start, and you need to have a compelling story with decent - but not cruel - cliffhangers to lead them into the next story - and you also need to lower your instalment price. For me it was never an option though because despite the (mostly) appealing plot, I couldn't even get into the first few chapters, and DNF'd this whole thing as a bad choice.
The first problem, as usual, was first person - or worst person voice. I've read a few decent 1PoV novels, and even written one myself, but I'm nowhere near being a fan of them, because they're usually whiny, self-centered, self-important, and annoying, and they severely limit the writing unless you apply the voice to the right kind of story. Otherwise it's one of the unforgivable sins.
The plot here is that main character Carrie Jo, while sleeping soundly in her bed, dreams about the places she's sleeping in - a sort of somnabulistic psychometry after a fashion. She can sense what's happened in the house where she sleeps, so she doesn't like to sleep in older houses, but she's offered money to uncover the secrets of the Seven Sisters - not a family, but a house of that name.
I was turned off by the book description saying, "The handsome and wealthy Ashland Stuart has hired her to uncover the history and the secrets of Seven Sisters," and I should have listened to my gut, because that sort of description almost 100% describes a novel that's going to be badly-written and feature a dumb-ass romance to boot. It rarely ends well, but other than that, the story sounded interesting; however, I started losing interest fast when the novel literally began with Carrie Jo abandoning her boyfriend without even saying good bye and taking off in her car. That made her cold and even callous in my book. I did not like her.
Worse than that, the story started rambling endlessly about the past as she drove, and it lost me, so I just quit. Had I written this I would have started it with Carrie Jo arriving at the house she was supposed to investigate, only briefly referencing things from the past if they were relevant. I also would have had her leaving her boyfriend because of a problem with him, rather than have her coldly abandon him. This would both make the reader sympathetic and make her seem worth listening to. As it was, she was just annoying and certainly not someone I'd want to get stuck with on a train or a bus ride!
Life is too short to waste on poorly-written and uninteresting novels about clichéd and boring characters, especially when there are so many authors out there begging to be heard, and who have well-written original stories with dazzling new characters, and who are willing to share their imaginative tales with us. It's an insult to them to force yourself to finish a novel that simply isn't doing it for you!
