The Girl Who Wasn't There by Kirk Slater 1/5
This was the book that was funded on the Kickstarter platform, way back before the Pandemic hit us.
It is only fair I have to separate the actual book review and my experience of the Kickstarter. I went for the Full Monty reward which included some sort of an extra, large Limited Edition book which I think was illustrated with maps or something? I cannot now say, because I never received it.
The actual paperback came, and I think an email notification from Kickstarter that the other package was on it's way. But, a pandemic was on and my mind was on other things like keeping our family safe. So, by the time I realised that the Limited Edition had never arrived, months had gone by and it was too late to do anything about it.
I forget now exactly how much I paid up front to the Kickstarter, but it was very, very expensive for the slim paperback that was all I got.
For sure I will never buy a book this way again.
Having said all that, Whatever went wrong with Kickstarter, the book is going to be judged on it's own merits.
So, much later I actually picked up the book and hoped for something good.
Unfortunately, the book was a very big disappointment. The writing was pretty bad. The characters didn't make any sense or achieve any life in my head at all. The plot just seemed to be recycled from bits of popular ghost films (and at the end had very big nonsensical holes in it you could drive a horse and carriage through.)
The research was poor. For instance at one point the Housekeeper tells the servant girl to get sheets from the "Lining cupboard" and this word is actually used twice. It should obviously be linen cupboard.
Then the main character of the servant girl got completely destroyed when the author had her use the expression "she could care less". Of course no English person would ever use that expression; it being a very modern American derivative corruption of "could not care less." . Again, poor research that stopped me getting into the mind of the main character.
So, I didn't like it.