If you are into the paranormal you've probably heard of the Jersey Devil, I think I was probably in third or fourth grade when I read my first version of the tale. It's always been one of my favorites and whenever my dad who was a truck driver had to go anywhere near Jersey he'd come back with some sort of "sighting" or that he'd heard of some sort of sighting. And as a Mom today I can absolutely understand poor Mrs. Leeds finding herself pregnant with her 13th child and accidentally laying a curse on it, hell I'd be the next Mrs. Leeds if I found myself pregnant again and I only have four! So when the DiGerolamo asked me to review this I was all over it, he had me at The Jersey Devil.
Lewis is 100% sure that even though he's failed at a lot of other things being a professional gambler is his true calling, so he's borrowed a thousand dollars from an unsavory source and is on his way to Atlantic City to make his mark on the world of professional card sharks. Unfortunately, he runs out of gas on the way there and has to make a pit stop in the "backwoods" of Southern New Jersey. Sure, he finds it weird that the cashier at the local convenient store he found himself at told him to just grab his gum and throw his money on the counter, but hey when in Rome right? But when a boy exits from the forest across the way and the cashier and his friend pull out a sword and gun and point them directly at the boy Lewis decides he is decidedly not Roman. As he dashes out to save the boy from the crazy hillbillies he quickly realizes that maybe he should be armed as well because he is looking straight at the infamous Jersey Devil and it looks hungry.
If you've ever wondered what Supernatural would have been like if Sam and Dean had been from Jersey, this is a good book for you! The Piney's takes the idea of "The Family Business" and expands it to include a whole town of Devil Hunters who are all loosely related. I really enjoyed the twist on the tale that the curse becomes a generational thing as well. It gives a reason for sightings of the Devil(s) to still occur even today.
This was a shorter book than I normally read and I've found I dislike reviewing those at it's not my usual thing, I feel like every short story would be significantly better if the author just had a hundred more pages and The Piney's is no exception. I found the plot progressed too quickly and that we find ourselves getting to know the characters through the dialogue, so we are getting to know the characters strictly through what they are saying, not what they are thinking as well so it's very superficial. That being said we do get to dive a little further in-depth with Lewis towards the end of the book which was very helpful to get a more complete picture of who he is.
The quality of the dialogue and its content really started to get to me towards the end and I honestly considered not finishing it. A lot of the dialogue feels unnatural or an under/overreaction to something another character said. Exclamation points were in spots I didn't feel warranted them or missing where I felt like they should have been. I also often found myself cringing for some of the characters because their lines were just weird. It also felt like the author was *trying* to be politically incorrect but mostly failing because even that was awkward. It was like when your child swears the first time but uses it in the wrong context and on the one hand, you are like, "okay we don't say that." But what you really want to say is, "Look, let's practice this so the next time you don't embarrass me by using it wrong."
Overall, I'm on the fence about it. I think it has an original plot and a set of characters that are deeper than what we get to see in the first book (hopefully). I'm just not sure if I'm intrigued enough to want to continue the series. Connecting with characters is one of my main motivations for reading and while I found that I enjoyed Lewis's character at the end slightly more than I did at the beginning I didn't get to that point with the rest of them. I probably will go ahead and read the second one though, to see if this cast of cousins gets a little bit more fleshed out.
No comments:
Post a Comment