Page Count 194
Publication date March 2020/ Publisher Black Swan
Synopsis
In a house in a wood, Ada and her father live peacefully, tending to their garden and the wildlife in it. They are not human though. Ada was made by her father from the Ground, a unique patch of earth with birthing and healing properties. Though perhaps he didn’t get her quite right. They spend their days healing the local human folk – named Cures – who visit them, suspiciously, with their ailments.
When Ada embarks on a relationship with a local Cure named Samson, and is forced to choose between her old life with her father, and a new one with her human lover. Her decision will uproot the town – and the Ground itself – for ever.
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Review
Follow Me To Ground? At times I found it hard to follow anything at all! In this novel dialogue is written suddenly
-like this
-like what?
-like this!
Making it difficult to immediately discern who is speaking, or in fact that anyone is speaking at all since it also appears to be used for inner monologue.
Several times I found myself rereading chunks of the page to understand the back and forth of a conversation. I’d get halfway through and realise I had assumed the characters the wrong way around.
Because of this format, separating dialogue from description also took more effort than necessary, which distracted me from the story.
Throughout Follow Me To Ground we get snippets of opinions on Ada and her father from the townsfolk. There’s no sense of a timeline to these and they blend mid paragraph back into Ada’s narration.
Whilst the premise is interesting and unique, the whole book is a confusing jumble of nonsense with a vague story of lust, incest and paedophilia beneath.
As you may be able to tell by now I was not a fan. I did enjoy reading about the healing process but aside from that I was not impressed.
I’ve seen 5 star reviews calling it scary, a nightmare fairytale, and I wonder whether we’ve received the same book! I would have DNF but it was a short read and I’d agreed to review.
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