Author: Geoffrey Girard
# of Pages: 272
Age Group: Adults
My Rating: 3.5/5
Review Copy?: Yes
[Summary from Amazon] Mary Rose Moreland and Simon Blake are the perfect couple: successful young professionals in Philadelphia, attractive, madly in love, and ready to start a life together. When they travel to England for Simon to ask her parents’ permission to marry Mary Rose, he learns an unsettling secret: Mary Rose disappeared when she was a little girl while the family was vacationing on a remote Scottish island. She reappeared mysteriously thirty-three days later in the exact same spot without a scratch on her and no memory of what had happened.
After Simon hears about this disturbing episode in Mary Rose’s childhood, he becomes obsessed with finding out what happened. He proceeds to launch his own investigation and arranges during their honeymoon for them to visit the island where she disappeared. But as Mary Rose’s behavior gets stranger after their engagement, the need for Simon to unlock the truth about her past grows even more urgent. What he uncovers is beyond his most terrifying fears.
I'm interested in the horror genre so when I was asked to review Mary Rose, I was intrigued to see what the story was about. From the summary alone, I assumed it would be horror/supernatural. There was not a lot of horror as I expected, if any at all.
Going into the novel, you read between the perspectives of Mary Rose and Simon. However, you'd be reading from Simon's point of view more as the story progresses. At the start, Mary Rose's character is already "off". She's described as fairy-like and a bit absent-minded. Simon is deeply in love with her, though it's a bit hard to understand why. The reader would get that she's beautiful and she's someone Simon wanted to protect because there's an innocent quality about her. You wouldn't learn much of how their relationship was prior.
The story starts off a bit slow but it hints at Mary Rose's ominous background. Trying to figure out what had happened to Mary Rose in the past kept me going. The writing is fluid and the author really set the atmosphere for the entire story. Each character that is introduced to Simon plays a role in the bigger picture, which is important to good story-telling.
I was a bit disappointed that the more supernatural aspects of the story was not fully explained. It's great if you prefer the mystery but personally I needed more. Mary Rose is more of a mystery novel that doesn't get to the core of the situation until three quarters in. I wouldn't say it's a spooky read but it will keep your attention at least until the very end. There's dynamic between the characters and plot line, but the pace of the story would be a bit slower than one would expect.
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