Unwept - Book Review

Unwept (The Nightbirds #1)
by Tracy Hickman and Laura Hickman

What is it about:
Gamin, Maine, is a remote seaside town where everyone seems to know Ellis Harkington better than she knows herself—but she doesn’t remember any of them.

Unknown events have robbed Ellis of her memory. Concerned individuals, who purport to be her friends and loved ones, insist that she simply needs to recuperate, that her memories may return in time, but refuse to divulge what has brought her to this state. For her own sake, so they say.

Ellis finds herself adrift in a town of ominous mysteries, cryptic hints, and disturbingly familiar strangers. The Nightbirds, a clique of fashionable young men and women, claim her as one of their own, but who among them can she truly trust? And what of the phantom suitor who visits her in her dreams? Is he a memory, a figment of her imagination, or a living nightmare beyond rational explanation?

Only her lost past hold the answers she seeks—if she can uncover its secrets before she fall prey to an unearthly killer.

What did I think of it:
*slightly spoilerish*

I loved the writing and the mood of this story, but the story itself is a big mess in my opinion.

Yes: Ellis has memory loss so she is an unreliable narrator, but add hallucinations, dreams, magic, and a bunch of lying jackasses to that and you can't trust anything that happens.

If the characters in this book had been more interesting I might not have minded the constant bamboozling of what was really going on, but I couldn't really connect with any of them. They felt grotesque and flat at the same time. It didn't invite me to care about them, and root for anyone of them. It was the mood and the writing that kept me reading, not the characters or the need to find out the truth.

And if you think things might get clearer further on in the book: Wrong! There are some things that seem to be getting clear, but at the same time some small hints are dropped to make you question other things you thought you might begin to understand.

At the end of the book I was underwhelmed to say the least, and annoyed enough to not care about what might happen in the next book. Maybe this might work for people who don't need to feel connected to at least one of the characters, but this isn't my kind of book.

Why should you read it:
It's a well written Paranormal read.