The Turner House by Angela Flournoy


The Turner House 
by Angela Flournoy
Narrator by Adenrele Ojo
Fiction
Unabridged Audiobook 12+ Hours
BUY ♦ GR
A novel centered on the journey of the Turner family and its thirteen siblings, particularly the eldest and youngest, as they face the ghosts of their pasts—both an actual haint and the specter of addiction—the imminent loss of their mother, and the necessary abandonment of their family home in struggling Detroit.

            

I was under the impression that this was a book about a haunted house. At about the halfway mark I finally realized that I was quite mistaken.

Yes, it took me that long to figure things out.


This is a book about suburban decay, family dynamics and little life dramas. It’s well written but it’s not a ghost story, not even close and that’s entirely my own fault. I guess I saw the word “haint” somewhere in the description and I saw nothing else. But because I had purchased the audio during a sale I was determined to finish it. Am I glad I did? Not particularly.

Viola and Francis raised 13 children and somehow managed to survive it with their sanity intact. I shudder just thinking about it. Anyway, Viola is now widowed, her health is ailing and her grown children are faced with dealing with the family home that’s been mortgaged to the hilt and is now worth next to nothing because the neighborhood has gone to crap, along with the economy.

This book does not focus on all thirteen siblings (thank the lord, I never would have been able to keep track) but instead tells the struggles of the oldest, ChaCha, who feels the weight of the world on his shoulders and has the specter of a haint hanging over him, the youngest, Lelah, who has a gambling addiction and Viola and Francis by flashing back to the past.

It’s a well written story but honestly I never felt attached to any of these people. They are real and real flawed, I’ll give you that, but I didn’t like any of them all that much and thus reading about their struggles (many of their own making) got a bit tiresome in the end. The book also never resolves the main issue of The Turner House and that bugged me.

Basically it is a tale of family dramas but unfortunately none of them were very juicy or devastating, if you ask me.

The narrator was decent but at times several of her characters sounded too similar and I got a little confused as to who was speaking.

Audiobook Challenge: Book #2
HA Mount TBR Challenge: Book #4
HA Pages Read Challenge
2017 Horror Reading Challenge I can't count this. Boo!!!

Comments

  1. Don't you hate it when a book is totally different from what you are expecting? This is where the ability to DNF would come in handy huh? (I suffer from that too). I can't stand it when I don't care what happens to anyone. Wouldn't it be nice to say to yourself "They all died and I lived happily ever after" and close the book forever. Hmmm...maybe I need to try that sometime.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. lol, you're so right. So much for my year of the DNF, right? I really need to take my own advice. I should've quit this one when I realized it wasn't what I thought it was. Ah well, one of these days I will learn my lesson.

      Delete
  2. If it had been about a haunted house I totally would have read it, but now .... Sorry this one wasn't better!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks, it could've been amazing but just wasn't meaty enough for me, I guess.

      Delete
  3. Oh man that is the worst when you go in expecting one thing and it is totally different. Sorry this wasn't what you wanted!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Grace. I need to get better about reading blurbs/reviews but I'm always afraid of spoiling thing so I skim and then this happens ;)

      Delete
  4. Oh no! I couldn't imagine having a book turn out so differently than I thought it would. I don't think I would have been able to finish it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It was a wee bit frustrating but completely my own fault.

      Delete
  5. Oh my, yep that certainly isn't the book you were expecting. LOL. I do like these types of stories, but have to be in the right mood.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm still in the mood for a haunted house story but am having a heck of time with my recent choices ;) I need to be a lot more careful with my book blurb skimming.

      Delete
  6. Oh no! Besides not being what you were expecting, it's so dissapointing that the characters were hard to connect to :( That might've salvaged this some even though it wasn't what you expetced.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. So true. I would've actually enjoyed it a lot more had I connected with the characters. Ah well, on to the next :)

      Thanks for visiting today Verushka!

      Delete
  7. I read the description and "an actual haint" made me think the same thing!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. There's a haint, sort of, but it's about .00001% of the book.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Between Naps (9)

It by Stephen King | A Retro Review

Review: Dark Stars: New Tales of Darkest Horror edited by John F.D. Taff