Friday 6 February 2015

The Lebrus Stone - Miriam Khan

Crystal had a hard childhood, she lost her parents in a car accident and her only other family was killed in a fire. After that she went from foster home to foster home until she ended up working in a bookstore for Jared, a father figure who keeps a close eye on her.

When a stranger walks into the shop and states that she is a distant relative with information about her mother, Crystal is drawn to Isobel and is happy to meet and talk. After a few months and still with little information she agrees to travel hundreds of miles to the woman’s home, Thorncrest Manor.
There she meets more family, none seem too friendly and she soon questions her agreement to travel so far from home. One man, Cray seems downright hostile to her, yet she can’t help but be pulled in. Her subconscious tells her there is more to this, to him, causing terrifying nightmares. Are the dreams warning her that there is danger to come?

I had no idea what to expect from this book and I have to say I am still not sure. At times the writing flows nicely and there are some great pieces of description. When she writes about Crystal’s hometown and the honey locusts it brings a clear picture to mind. For me her character wasn’t quite strong enough for the situations she found herself in. It is a personal opinion but when she was surrounded by the hateful family and it is obvious that she was going to learn nothing more about her mother, why would she stay? If she didn’t it would have been a much shorter book and I understand the need to present a hostile group, however it needs to be realistic and for me I didn’t get that. The fact that Isobel psychoanalyses everything that Cray and Crys does grated at me. Why was she not standing up for herself?

There is a section once everything is revealed that as we are in first person we simply jump from one situation to other with no idea what is going on. This is keeping us in Crystal’s mindset but I felt that the reader still needed some structure and it simply confused me.

I liked the fact that though there is a strong supernatural element it was kept in relativity rather than fantasy which held the book together. Overall the story was a good one watching the true motives of the family unfold was interesting. I feel that it would benefit from a good edit to present a more structure story. From the ending I am not sure if there will be a sequel but it will be nice to see how the writer develops.