Review Detail

Reader reviewed by Elise

Eh. This book was alright. I hesitate to say even that. It was extremely
put-downable, in my opinion. The beginning was slow, and I hardly
absorbed anything until around page fifty. Calder annoyed me to no end
pretty much the entire time.

I hate giving books lukewarm
reviews, but I'm only being honest--despite great promise, this
"supernatural romance" (as the cover claims) was less romantic than a
funeral and half as exciting. Part of my problem, I think, was the
history involved. It was a Russian Revolution piece, saturated with
politics and war and Anastasia. I couldn't help but sigh and roll my
eyes when I discovered it would be another one of those stories.

Aside
from that, Calder was a Fetch, and though I respect and appreciate
Whitcomb's creativity where Heaven and the afterlife were involved, I
admit it bored me. Throughout the story, Calder presses us with
suspense about "Will I be forgiven?" and "Where's the Captain?" or
"Where's the Key?" scattered around "I want to kiss Ana but I'm too
holy and considerate!" Ugh. His virtue was tantamount to tedium, even
though the point of the novel was that he broke his Vows and came to
Earth.

I thought the research on the era was well done, the
characters and situations were mostly realistic, but the voice of the
writing was terribly monotonous. I think it could have been made more
exciting by shifting the point of view to Ana, though I can't see how
the plot would hold up around that. Overall, The Fetch
was a book that I'm surprised I was able to finish, but of which I can
give little real opinion. It had good and bad points, almost equally,
but is definitely not one my favorite reads thus far.