Kelly's Reviews > The Stopped Heart

So I will always finish a book if I get past 10% or so. Mostly because if I like the writing style, I will be able to tolerate the plot, however inconsistent and flawed. I got to that 10% point here and was sold - by Eliza's narration especially - and between that and the 4- and 5- star reviews I was expected to really enjoy this.

The summary is a good set-up for a thriller - 150 years in the past a stranger happens upon a family after a storm and gradually settles in. He is supposed to be enigmatic to the reader (view spoiler)[but it's pretty obvious from the beginning he's going to be the source of all their problems (hide spoiler)]. Fast forward to the present and a new couple is moving into the same house. Mary and Graham Coles are relocating out of London to get away from their own recent family trauma, which gets revealed somewhere in the middle of the book.

Here's where things get kind of clumsy: somehow, Mary and the children from this past family can see and hear each other at points. There's no feasible reason for this. There were a lot of loose ends on both timelines (view spoiler)[Was Eddie supposed to be James' son? If so, how in the heck did he manage to jump time? And who DIDN'T see that James was a con-man from the beginning? Also, how would Lottie know Mary's two daughters and how they died if they weren't killed anywhere near there? And was the author trying to hint that James killed the present-day girls as well as all the girls back in the past - because how would that work if they weren't killed near that house? (hide spoiler)] which is fine - I don't always expect a neatly wrapped up story... but I do expect that the probable solutions to those hanging threads make some kind of sense.

If you don't really care about plot holes and just want a chilling story, you will get that here. There were some parts that are satisfyingly horrific, but ultimately it wasn't enough to mask the sloppy narrative for me. A disappointing 2 stars.