A review by impybelle
The Fetch by Laura Whitcomb
3.0
Recently I went through my "ooh, shiny!" shelf and actually decided I was going to read some of these books, dangit. The Fetch happened to be at the top of the list so here we are. I... don't know how I feel about it? I don't know how it ended up on the OS! list to begin with, but I did read and enjoy "A Certain Slant of Light" so I figured past!me knew what she was doing.
Reading the blurb and the first chapter or so of the book, I was really excited. Annnnnnnnnd then we just slammed into "wait, what?" territory and I never fully recovered.
Did you ever think to yourself, "What if Anastasia Romanov fell in love with a not-quite-angel walking around in Rasputin's body?" Your reaction to that question will probably tell you all you need to know about how much you'll like the book.
I kept waiting for Calder to ditch Rasputin's body and it literally does not happen until the end of the book. So you spend the whole damn thing trying desperately not to remember that he's all Rasputin-y and even if she sees him as Calder, it's still just really freakin' weird. And you can't forget it either, as the book will take great pains to remind you of this fact. I don't have the words, truly, beyond "WHY" repeated in an endless loop that gets progressively more desperate the longer it goes on.
If you manage to push that very, very, VERY strange concept aside, I think there's actually something really interesting here. I liked that Calder's 'possession' of Rasputin's body explains some of the more fantastical elements attributed to the man. I love the concept of Fetches (though I swear Mean Girls has ruined the word for most of a generation) and the death doors and the change in Alexis and the reveal of the soul Calder is meant to free. I also really loved the final two boat rides in the book. However, this wasn't a book I wanted to race back and finish any time I had to put it down. I wanted to like it far more than I actually did and it feels like there's another version of this book somewhere in the multiverse that is *amazing* and for that reason I'm going with three stars.
Reading the blurb and the first chapter or so of the book, I was really excited. Annnnnnnnnd then we just slammed into "wait, what?" territory and I never fully recovered.
Did you ever think to yourself, "What if Anastasia Romanov fell in love with a not-quite-angel walking around in Rasputin's body?" Your reaction to that question will probably tell you all you need to know about how much you'll like the book.
I kept waiting for Calder to ditch Rasputin's body and it literally does not happen until the end of the book. So you spend the whole damn thing trying desperately not to remember that he's all Rasputin-y and even if she sees him as Calder, it's still just really freakin' weird. And you can't forget it either, as the book will take great pains to remind you of this fact. I don't have the words, truly, beyond "WHY" repeated in an endless loop that gets progressively more desperate the longer it goes on.
If you manage to push that very, very, VERY strange concept aside, I think there's actually something really interesting here. I liked that Calder's 'possession' of Rasputin's body explains some of the more fantastical elements attributed to the man. I love the concept of Fetches (though I swear Mean Girls has ruined the word for most of a generation) and the death doors and the change in Alexis and the reveal of the soul Calder is meant to free. I also really loved the final two boat rides in the book. However, this wasn't a book I wanted to race back and finish any time I had to put it down. I wanted to like it far more than I actually did and it feels like there's another version of this book somewhere in the multiverse that is *amazing* and for that reason I'm going with three stars.