Review: The Unquiet by Jeannine Garsee

The Unquiet by Jeannine Garsee
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I'm not really sure where to start with this review, other than saying I enjoyed my time reading The Unquiet. When the book first opens, we're introduced to Rinn. A girl with a troubled past who, along with her mother, is trying to make a fresh start after what happened 3 months ago.

What happens three months ago is revealed fairly quickly. In fact, I thought we'd find out near the end, but nope. Rinn's past and her mental condition is brought up before the real novel actual starts.

Real Novel you say?

Yes, the real novel. Despite Rinn's colourful history, which has all the makings of a book by itself, the Unquiet is at its heart a ghost story. A ghost story that will take it's time to develop. A ghost story that will have you wondering, "Isn't this suppose to be a ghost story?" And maybe asking yourself, "Where's the ghost?"

Trust me, this will happen. I myself was wondering when a ghost will appear. Now mind you, the ghost is mentioned quite a bit, but nothing really happens in the first part of the novel.

This may be a good or bad thing depending on your patience, but once I completed the novel I was fine with it. In fact, I actually prefer the book this way. I feel like if the 'ghost' portion of the novel came sooner, it might not have had the same sort of oomph as it did here.

The only downside is that I feel like Garsee was trying to make the reader doubt Rinn as a narrator for some scenes, only it never really worked. Even when we see Rinn off her pills, the sudden change in her behaviour did feel out of place. Not in the sense that it wouldn't happen, it would. I don't doubt that. But the quickness of it happening seemed a bit too fast for me.

Then again, I'm not too too familiar with the inner workings of this condition, so I can't really say if it was too fast or not in reality. But in book form, it felt that way.

However, that didn't really deter from the story or from Rinn.

Was I scared, no. But I did love every minute of this, especially the limited screen time to the romance portion of this novel.

Overall, I just couldn't stop myself from reading this.

Plus:

+ The ghost isn't friendly
+ Rinn is a great lead character
+ Romance didn't play a bit part in this novel
+ The story surrounding Rinn's past was heartbreaking
+ The writing is flows well
+ I couldn't stop reading it. I even put another book on hold just to see how this one would end.

Minus:

- The novel does take its time in getting to the ghost story
- We never doubt Rinn, despite her mental condition telling us to do that. I felt like we were suppose to feel this way at some points, but it didn't work.
- (view spoiler)[I understood why the children of Millie, Joey, Luke, and Monica were targeted by Annaliese, but why Meg and her parents? Or even Lacy? What was the point of hurting them when they had nothing to do with what happened? (hide spoiler)]
- Wanted a conclusion for some of the characters, but never got it.

4 stars out of 5