📘 The Uninvited
by Tim Wynne-Jones
Genre Fiction ◦ YA
Publication Candlewick Press ◦ 2009
Format & Source Print ◦ Library
Rating ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆
📚 What It's About
Mimi Shapiro has just finished her first year of college at NYU. While there, she began an affair with a professor which did not end well. She desperately wants to get away, so her estranged father offers her his old cottage in Canada for the summer. She accepts his offer and when she arrives, is shocked to find a young man already inhabiting it. They soon discover they share the same father and that neither one knew about the other.
Quickly, her newfound brother, Jay, reveals that strange and frightening things have been happening at the cottage. As if their newly discovered relationship isn’t enough to deal with, they must now deal with these strange occurrences which Jay details: strange things showing up in the house (dead birds, snakeskin), and indescribable noises on his music recordings. Soon, the intruder turns more aggressive, breaking into the home and stealing the sibling’s possessions. What or who does he want? Can they catch him before things turn dangerous?
📝 My Review
Umm, this book was weird. It won awards and was one of the options for me to read for my YA Lit. class, and I was sorely disappointed despite the promising sounding story line.
I loooove scary and creepy and I was totally expecting that with this book. Instead of scary creepy though, it was just… bizarre and gross creepy. As in, inappropriate relationships with no explanation or justification. We as the reader know who the intruder is from almost the beginning and I never found this person to be all that threatening or scary, just plain weird. So that took away a lot of the scary factor and mystery for me. I didn’t feel as though there was any suspense or mystery, just strange people doing even stranger things.
The relationships in this book were also weird and unrealistic. All sorts of secret siblings with hidden feelings for each other and a baby daddy that was basically a manwhore with lots of secret children.
This review is terrible and I’m sorry. I really cannot recommend this book though. I love weird stuff (my favorite author is Chuck Palahniuk, for crying out loud), but this was just plain bizarre without trying to be. If it was trying to be, then maybe I would have felt differently, but instead I was just disturbed. Now, you all know I try to always be nice in my reviews and I will say that all the bizarre happenings intrigued me enough to finish this book… but the twisted relationships just really disturbed me and made it hard to like this story very much. It was definitely not my cup of tea, but maybe it’ll be yours?
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