A review by lydiagrace1999
Chasing the Traveller by Alex Kane
2.0
I thought I'd enjoy this read after looking over the reviews on here. However, I was left a little disappointed.
Don't get me wrong, the premise of the novel is good. A woman suffering at the hands of her husband, escaping that abusive life to live freely and away from harm- a better life for her and her daughter.
However, the writing style was lacking. It honestly felt like I was reading the same clichés over and over again. Kane had full opportunity to explore how Katelyn would handle pregnancy having only just escaped from her toxic household, but to completely skip ahead a year into the future between two chapters? Either Kane didn't feel this key part of the timeline was important, or she didn't know how to write about pregnancy whatsoever.
It was also surprising that Kane set the majority of the novel in Glasgow, seeming to be extremely close from the traveller site that Katelyn so desperately wanted to be as far away as possible from. If she was so scared of running into her husband and his gang, wouldn't it have been common sense to have moved further away?
I also found the speech in this novel to be really inconsistent. The only real Scottish/Glaswegian dialogue you found spoken was from those of lower classes (cleaners, manual workers). I had real issue with how Katelyn and other big characters like Helen and Elsa spoke to each other. They seemed at every given opportunity to launch themselves into paragraph-long soliloquies, which is definitely not how real people talk to each other in reality.
Overall, this book had so much potential, but so many factors meant that for me, it fell short of being a great novel.
Don't get me wrong, the premise of the novel is good. A woman suffering at the hands of her husband, escaping that abusive life to live freely and away from harm- a better life for her and her daughter.
However, the writing style was lacking. It honestly felt like I was reading the same clichés over and over again. Kane had full opportunity to explore how Katelyn would handle pregnancy having only just escaped from her toxic household, but to completely skip ahead a year into the future between two chapters? Either Kane didn't feel this key part of the timeline was important, or she didn't know how to write about pregnancy whatsoever.
It was also surprising that Kane set the majority of the novel in Glasgow, seeming to be extremely close from the traveller site that Katelyn so desperately wanted to be as far away as possible from. If she was so scared of running into her husband and his gang, wouldn't it have been common sense to have moved further away?
I also found the speech in this novel to be really inconsistent. The only real Scottish/Glaswegian dialogue you found spoken was from those of lower classes (cleaners, manual workers). I had real issue with how Katelyn and other big characters like Helen and Elsa spoke to each other. They seemed at every given opportunity to launch themselves into paragraph-long soliloquies, which is definitely not how real people talk to each other in reality.
Overall, this book had so much potential, but so many factors meant that for me, it fell short of being a great novel.