Audiobook Review: Cackle

Mrs P

Jun 3

Rachel Harrison ~ Cackle

Synopsis

All her life, Annie has played it nice and safe. After being unceremoniously dumped by her longtime boyfriend, Annie seeks a fresh start. She accepts a teaching position that moves her from Manhattan to a small village upstate. She's stunned by how perfect and picturesque the town is. The people are all friendly and warm. Her new apartment is dreamy too, minus the oddly persistent spider infestation.

Then Annie meets Sophie. Beautiful, charming, magnetic Sophie, who takes a special interest in Annie, who wants to be her friend. More importantly, she wants Annie to stop apologizing and start living for herself. That's how Sophie lives. Annie can't help but gravitate toward the self-possessed Sophie, wanting to spend more and more time with her, despite the fact that the rest of the townsfolk seem…a little afraid of her. And like, okay. There are some things. Sophie's appearance is uncanny and ageless, her mansion in the middle of the woods feels a little unearthly, and she does seem to wield a certain power… but she couldn't be… could she?

Review

This dark witchy sapphic feminist tale was not dark. Or sapphic. It felt like a child's book with a 30-year-old protagonist who whined constantly. Definitely one of the most irritating main characters I've ever read about. It was also quite boring and nothing remotely interesting happened until about halfway through when a few ghosts showed up.

Sadly the rest of the book is annoying Annie being coddled by an older lady who buys her gifts and tells her what to do, whilst spying on her. Extremely toxic.

Ralph the spider was kind of cool, but both women are just mean and petty for no reason. I wanted more magic, but we barely saw anything and I don't really see the point of the book? Yes she learned to love herself without needing a man, but she didn't learn to be independent and was sponging off Sophie for the whole time.

It was also unnecessarily descriptive - I really didn't care about her journey to work, the coffee she drank and how she liked her eggs. It could have worked as a shorter YA story but in its current form it just didn't.

Very disappointing.