Review Detail

"Naughty John, Naughty John, does his work with his apron on. Cuts your throat and takes your bones, sells them off for a couple of stones."

Evangeline O'Neill, AKA Evie, is a seventeen year old, rebellious troublemaker. Who is sent away from her home in Ohio to New York, because of a stunt she pulled at a party. She is sent to live with her uncle Will, curator of the Museum of American Folklore, Superstition, and the Occult, which is more commonly known as the Museum of Creepy Crawlies. For a bit, everything seems perfect. But then there are mysterious murders in the city, and she has to struggle to keep her own special ability secret.

This is a pretty scary book, and I think that this book would have probably gotten a lower rating if it hadn't been. With the whole whistling thing, and Naughty John comes and kills you and then takes your eyes/tongue/arms/legs? Yeeeahh.... Watch out.

Now, I know this book's length looks intimidating. It took me a while to fully get into it, maybe 100 pages, but after that slow part, this book is really entertaining.

I had a few problems with this book, the biggest and foremost being Evie. Ugh, she just BUGGED me so much. At first I thought she was shallow and selfish, and guess what? At the end, she STILL seemed shallow and selfish. I mean, seriously. You have a clairvoyant ability. You don't just go blurting it to the first people you meet just because you want attention, or want to stay in the spotlight. evie was blurting ALL her secrets just to stay under the spotlight, and that really grated on my nerves. Then at the end, I was thinking "Well, that's good, she's probably learned her lesson about blurting to the reporters, and guess what? She's STILL blurting all her secrets to stay in the spotlight. She's just never anything more to me than a 1920's shallow stereotypes spouting annoying phrases.

There were also too many pointless side characters. Let me name a few. Sam Lloyd, whose only job was to hint at what will come,Blind John, whose job was the same, Memphis, whose job was the same, Isaiah, whose job was the same, Theta, who did the same, Henry, who, surprise, surprise, did the same, and Mabel, who just seemed pretty useless in general, except maybe to provide more drama in the whole romance part.

So, when we have all these side characters, each with their own side plot which pretty much has nothing to do with the story at all, reading their parts starts to feel like a chore.

Now that you know about all the parts that made me feel really annoyed, you may be asking, "Well, where's the good stuff?" Here it is. Some of the scenes were really good, (mostly the murder scenes and the parts where there was actually running around). The way Bray writes makes some of the scenes so spooky and awesome, and it's really sad when the shallow characters kind of ruin that feel for me.

It was hard to rate this book because some parts were really good, and other parts were just... meh.