Dunmoor - A Gothic Letdown

 

I can't say this was the biggest letdown of my life but it was definitely a letdown. Our story surrounds Lady Helena Winters, after a less than great marriage to Drake Winters, a poet, he has now disappeared off the face of the Earth, the rumors are he's run off with one of the many women he cheated on Helena with. This being the early 19th century she is beyond embarrassed by the whole thing and has kind of become a hermit. And while Lady Winters is nursing her wounds at her father's home her father gets an invite from Lucas Lennox, he has just recently purchased Dunmoor from Lord Winters (before he disappeared) and is turning it into an orphanage, he's invited Helena's father to a ball to raise funds for his orphanage and her father in turn has invited Helena and one of her friends to attend. Helena is not exactly excited by the proposition but attends anyway. 

Dunmoor itself has a dark history; originally owned by some friars it lost its status thanks to Henry VIII and rumor has it that friars made a deal with the devil to keep anyone from ever living there, happily at least. Weird things begin to happen almost as soon as everyone arrives and it's up to Helena and a cast of characters to save the orphanage from the curse. 

Or something like that. Let me be clear there is not only a curse that has created some sort of evil ents that are able to invade the house itself, there's a cult that sacrifices people to the evil ents, there are weird women who emerge from a fountain who are also evil ents (?), there's sex trafficking of children, there's Helena's missing husband (who was abused by the cult) and who was also in an incestuous relationship with his sister, and there is an eccentric old lady who is by blood bound to the cult who is trying to bring them down. Oh and just as an addition Helena's friend disappears halfway-ish in the book after the most anti-climatic coach robbery in the history of mankind. There is so much going on in this book it's hard to enjoy it. And since there is so much going on there's really very little character or plot development. To be honest though even if the author had picked just one lane and stayed in it I don't believe I would have enjoyed this anymore. I simply didn't connect with any of the characters or the story for that matter. 

And let me just go on a small rant on the women that emerge from the fountain that may or may not be the tree monsters. In the first scene that these women appear you very much get a Lady of the Lake vibe, not even playing I kinda thought they were gonna hand Luke a sword and be like, hey cut down the evil forest with this. They are, of course, naked, and apparently, they have some sort of Double Team move (yes, I just made a reference to a Pokemon move) because they go from three women to six in like thirty seconds. They show up later on and turn into a tree monster thing and are set on fire. But they come out of the fucking water so how in the hell are they also super flammable!? I do not like these things at all in terms of "monsters". They aren't scary and they make no sense at all. 

Whew, sorry had to get that off of my chest. Moving on. 

The biggest let down though was the fact that this wasn't really scary at all. The whole creepy forest thing is less creepy and more, oh dear god will someone just set it on fire and be done with it. There are a few instances where a character mentions that a new vine has popped up and I seriously kinda wanted to just toss my Kindle after a while because really no one even tries to just chop down these damn vines. Don't know about you but if a demonic forest was trying to get into my house I'd take an ax to it for starters. In terms of the human bad guys in the cult, they are pathetically stereotypical; they stand around in circles chanting weird crap in black robes and are easily dispatched at the end of the book. And when the eccentric old lady finally explains the whole story about the cult and the tree monsters it's pointless you've already pieced it all together. 

Overall this will be my last stop in Dunmoor, I know there are two more books in this series but I just can't do it. I think it should have concluded with this one. The forest is gone, Helena and Luke are gonna get married while raising Lucy's baby, and they'll run the best damn orphanage around. Everyone's happy and the author can't add in seven more freaking topics to an already convoluted storyline.