A review by mwalsh97
Gothikana by RuNyx

dark emotional mysterious sad tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

I actually enjoyed the plot to solve the murders way more than I thought I would. I had fairly low expectations for this book as far as plot goes. The spice was decent, I would've liked the book to be more plot heavy than spicy heavy. 
The FMC is a bit of a "I'm not like other girls because I have dark hair and weird eyes." Maybe I'm just over that trope, I think it's been around for a while and shows up in YA books fairly often. I also couldn't tell when the book was set in? There was internet and cell phones but the FMC lived off grid and the town around the school seemed more akin to a old timey town than a modern one. Maybe that's just because of the lack of description in the time period department, it took away from the story a bit. Anytime the technology was brought up it seemed both more advanced and out of place than it should be. In my brain I settled on the time period being late '80s to '90s since it was never specified or made clear in the story itself.
RuNyx writes really good spooky paranormal mysteries and I think this story could have stood on its own without the explicit spice if the it was fleshed out more and tweaked a little. I would love to see a less spicy spooky paranormal mystery from them in the future.
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