Growing up in the town of Sleepy Hollow, the mystery and intrigue over Washington Irving's classic legend are all part of daily life for sixteen-year-old Abbey. But when her best friend, Kristen, vanishes at the bridge near Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Abbey's world is suddenly turned upside down. While everyone is all too quick to accept that Kristen is dead, Abbey refuses to believe that she is really gone. And when Abbey meets the gorgeous, but mysterious, Caspian at Kristen's memorial she starts to feel like she has something to hold on to for the first time since Kristen's disappearance. But when Abbey finds a diary hidden in Kristen's bedroom, she begins to question everything she thought she knew about her best friend. How could Kristen have kept silent about so much? And could this secret have led to her disappearance or even her death? Hurt and angry at Kristen's betrayal, Abbey turns to Caspian for support...and uncovers a frightening truth about him that threatens both their emerging love and her sanity...
Review:
An intriguing reworking of a classic ghost story.
The plot was built up very slowly, and seemed to hold a story within a story. On one hand you had the story of Abbey's friends mysterious death and hidden secrets. On the other you have the mysterious boy (Caspian) and old couple (Nikolas & Katy) Abbey meets in a Graveyard. The plot twists are well written and believable.
The descriptions are wonderful, I especially liked the references to the aromatherapy oils (being a trained aromatherapist as one of my myriad of jobs) I could almost smell the scents in the air.
The characters were well rounded and their personalities and actions were believable, even with the twists to the tale. However, I did find that I could not completely relate to the female protagonist (Abbey) mainly due to the fact that I cannot possibly think of wandering around a cemetery as something to do for fun! I also felt that the schools reaction to the death of one of its pupils was rather odd.
There are quotes for Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow at the start of the chapters, although they do reinforce the storyline I couldn't help but picture the gore-fest that was the movie Sleepy Hollow starring Johnny Depp (remember I do not like gore being of the squeamish variety) so these did nothing to enhance the story for me, in fact I think it detracted from the actual beauty of the story with these vivid gory pictures popping into my technicolour imagination. Not that the author would be aware of my linking the 2 things together in my head!
Although I did enjoy the story as a whole, the plot has left me with a lot of unanswered questions on both of the intertwining story-lines. I was slightly disappointed with the ending as I felt I was left hanging with all of these questions and no way of reconciling them. I am hoping the next book The Haunted will tie up some of these points for me.
Have you read The Legend of Sleepy Hollow? I downloaded an ebook the other day of it, but it started off rather dry and I didn't get anywhere with it.
ReplyDeleteAlso, you might want to change your comments layout. After I hit 'post comment' I don't generally stick around to see if there will be comment moderation after it and it's only by chance that I've seen it on this page before I closed the window!