Review: Elsewhere

Elsewhere by Sarah Tierney
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Narrated by Lorna Bennett, Kat Rose-Martin
Presented by Dreamscape Media

Pretty thin in the suspense department. I was expecting a dead body at some stage though so that's probably on me and my misguided expectations.

The story here follows estranged sisters Catherine and Anna as they come together for a couple weeks at a cabin off the grid. No wi-fi, no electricity, just each other and a bunch of strange happenings. Hmm.

So things get a little creepy for the sisters when someone trashes their outside area early on, and then suddenly their water runs brown. A local explains it's just peat in the water and that this is a regular occurrence after rain, but Catherine is convinced it's something more sinister.

Basically, this book is a lot of Catherine being convinced someone is out to get her with not really much reason.

I found her chapters almost unbearable. She comes across as paranoid and a little crazy, rather than the story seeming eerie and thrilling. Her chapters were slow and frustratingly deluded. I didn't like her at all and I found myself eager to get back to Anna.

Anna was much more fun, and her chapters injected a little more cheer. She seemed a little more logical, and more likely to think things through. She was able to think of solutions, but she was also very boy-focused which does get a little tiring after a while.

Ultimately, I just didn't really like the characters, and there wasn't enough happening for this to feel like a thriller to me. There was an interesting twist but it didn't seem to fit the story at all - it seemed more like the story was built around the twist and, as a consequence, there wasn't a lot of substance.

Narration was kind of awful - Catherine's chapters were morose and slow, hard to understand at times and there wasn't a lot of character coming through her voice. Anna's narrator was a little better, but there still seemed to be times where the emotions didn't seem to match the words.

I thought this would be an eerie murder mystery but it's really just two lonely girls hanging out in an isolated cabin for a little bit. There just wasn't much here for me to get into.

With thanks to NetGalley for an audio ARC

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