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Water Ghosts (2010)

by Shawna Yang Ryan(Favorite Author)

3.31 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

0143117270 (ISBN13: 9780143117278)

languge

English

genre

Historical Fiction

publisher

Penguin Books

review 1: For beautiful writing, this book deserves a couple more stars. The story, however, just wasn't very interesting. It didn't really go anywhere and moved slowly getting there. I cared about only one of the characters, and even then not very much. That I made it through the book at all is testament to how lovely the writing was, but sans a decent story line, that wasn't enough to make this a good read.
review 2: I'm still not exactly sure how I feel about this book. When I first started it, the writing style seemed very strange. Present tense, and no quotation marks when people were clearly speaking, almost like one long run-on sentence. But I actually got used to it surprisingly quickly, and helped the book flow so that I seemed to read it faster. Then I was ... moreslightly put off and confused by jumping back and forth between years, but after a few times it fit the story as memories shaped the characters. Halfway through I was glad I had given it a chance, and thought it would promise revelations at the ending. And that's where it lost stars. The ending was kind of a let down for me. I get that it may have been making a point about the state of all their lives, the banality and often hopelessness of them, and didn't expect everyone to suddenly win the lottery and ride off on unicorns, but I just wanted something more. A little more closure, I suppose. It was definitely an interesting read; I just wish I felt like I was finished with a good book when it was over, rather than feeling like a read a pretty good middle. less

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