Yzabel / April 4, 2015

Mary Hades by Sarah Dalton

My rating: [rating=2]

Blurb:

Not many seventeen year old girls have a best friend who’s a ghost, but then Mary Hades isn’t your average teenager.

Scarred physically and mentally from a fire, her parents decide a holiday to an idyllic village in North Yorkshire will help her recover. Nestled in the middle of five moors, Mary expects to have a boring week stuck in a caravan with her parents. Little does she know, evil lurks in the campsite…

Seth Lockwood—a local fairground worker with a dark secret—might be the key to uncovering the murky history that has blighted Nettleby. But Mary is drawn to him in a way that has her questioning her judgement.

Helped by her dead best friend and a quirky gay Goth couple, Mary must stop the unusual deaths occurring in Nettleby. But can she prevent her heart from being broken?

The first in a series of dark YA novels, Mary Hades follows on from the bestselling Kindle Single ‘My Daylight Monsters’. A spine-tingling tale with romance, readers will be shocked and entertained in equal measure.

With some scenes of horror and some strong language, this book is best suited for readers aged fifteen and up.

Review:

(I got a copy through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)

Mary Hades mostly delivers on vivid descriptions when it comes to the murderous ghost, the time spent running away at night on the moors, and other scenes that are of the traditional and expected kind in such a story. I liked reading those parts, and the writing style in general, while not being exceptional, was pleasant. The novel introduced interesting ideas, too, especially the ones revolving around lacey and what she may or may not become as a ghost: she’s been dead for a short time, yet the question remains whether the gruesome circumstances of said death could cause her to turn bad, just as the enemy turned bad. This is definitely something deserving to be explored.

However, the rest of the story seemed to plod along, despite being short enough. The romance, for one, felt forced and not really useful, leaving me thinking “Yes, and?…” in the end, and nothing more. Was there really need for a romance here? I don’t think so. They could’ve been friends, and it would just have been the same. Call me a picky reader, and unfair to the author, but I’ve read way too many YA books by now to still be awed by romance the doesn’t have an actual role to play.

I also couldn’t help but question the presence of other characters. Mary, Lacey, Seth, Igor: OK. The other ones, though, felt superfluous, didn’t really help, didn’t bring much to the plot either. I guess their main interest was to be “the gay couple next door”, but then, might as well give them something relevant to do, not just hand around as wannabe ghost hunters. It smelt suspiciously of “let’s add gay people to show that we like them”, almost in a trendish way. (Maybe I’m totally mistaken as to the intent: it’s just the way I perceived it.)

I remain torn when it comes to the part about Dr Gethen. I know the novel stemmed from a novella, and it’s clear the author wanted her readers to be able to enjoy Mary Hades without necessarily having had to read the previous story. This is commendable, and the few reminders peppered here and there helped me piece those events together, enough that I was able to easily get what happened to Mary and Lacey and drove them where they are now. On the other hand, it wasn’t enough—or, rather, it was a shortcut to something Mary had to come to terms with, only I got the coming-to-terms part without the emotional and literary investment in it. I guess one had better read the novella before, all in all, if only to feel more invested.

Finally, while the murderous ghost was frightening enough in the beginning, I thought her demise went too quickly, too easily. She should’ve been more of a challenge, deserved more screen time, perhaps a death or two that the characters would have felt more deeply? (The little boy, and the guy working at the fair, are killed too early, without the reader having had a chance to get interested in them, so they’re more MacGuffins than characters… if this makes sense).

Conclusion: easy to read, with potential, but not living up to it, and not very memorable. This made it barely “OK” for me.