Dorothy Morrison
Lucinda’s Web
Review brought to you by OBS staff member Verushka
I have no experience with any of Dorothy Morrison’s other non-fiction works, so I cannot compare her writing to anything she’s done before. On its own merits, the premise of this book is intriguing, but once cracked open, I found so many things to dislike about the book, that the effort it takes to look past all that just isn’t worth it.
It is a novel of reincarnation, dreams and spells; Morrison has the elements of an engaging and interesting book. She is a practicing Wiccan and it’s obvious that in those elements, she knows what she is talking about. However, to get to that, I had to wade through, among other things, at last count 5 different points-of-view. I stopped counting when I hit the 5th point-of-view.
That is pretty much the biggest hurdle to enjoying this book. When done right, a first person point-of-view can be a fun, engaging and intimate look into a character’s mind. I’ve read books where the first person point of view is retained through different chapters allowing two characters at maximum a voice to show the reader how they are affected by the book, and I get it – I get the desire to show the story through the different eyes of the characters involved in the book. But seriously, it’s a minimum of 5 characters getting a point of view, not even in a first person voice, but a third person narrative. Which means, there is Tess, the main character’s point of view, in a first person narrative, before there’s a switch to a secondary character, third person narrative, back to Tess and then possibly a third character, third person point of view in one chapter. The changes in the point of view aren’t actually long enough for the reader to gain any insight into the characters at all – they’re too short to give any depth to these characters. Worst of all though, they detract from Tess, who has the main character should be supported by the characters around her. The switches in point of view are jarring, and confusing and I’m guessing since everyone in the story has some part to play in the story, the author wanted them to have a voice, unfortunately, less is more and not every character you created needs to have a voice in a book. The entire novel suffers desperately as a result.
I started the book enjoying Tess, the main character. She is loud, neurotic, fun and incredibly relatable, but after a time, she is simply trying and emotionally draining to read. Her interactions with characters who are supposed to be her friends and lovers, are confusing, for she goes from a normal conversation, to screeching at them at a drop of a hat, with no good reason I can see for that change in Tess. Eventually, she presented a picture of a difficult person, who just wanted to be the center of attention with her excessive emotional displays.
All the characters suffer from this, and to be frank, no-one is likable because of it. More than that, they suffer from an excessive use of question marks and exclamation marks for most of the character’s dialogues. Why? I don’t know; the author seems to not like the word “said” as well.
The book drops the reader into Tess’ life, without giving any explanation about who she is, other than she is struggling to find another home to live in. It is a relatable beginning, but, but beyond that, I didn’t any sense about who she is, other than being very dramatic judging by the amount of exclamation marks in the story. I thought initially I wasn’t getting these bits about her because I was reading the second book in a series, but this is the first title. From there, there is a high-speed dive into the premise of the book, involving a graveyard that she happens to live opposite now.
I wanted to like this book, I really did; but in the end, it requires too much effort to wade through confusing points-of-views and unlikable characters.
