The Waiting Room by F.G. Cottam


4 Stars. 

I picked this book up a few months ago on a Waterstones trip in the horror section. I really enjoy books about ghosts and hauntings, and, although this book wasn't really scary by the end, I still enjoy the book. There isn't anything in particular that scares me anymore, especially when reading, nor does anything make me shudder in how disgusting or gruesome something was. 

The Waiting Room follows a few main characters points of view. The first is Julian Creed who makes a living out of the paranormal through TV shows and acting as a fraud through making out to be the real deal. Our second main character is Martin Stride who is an ex-rockstar and now lives with his wife, Monica, and his two children on a wonderful estate in the country with plenty of land. Elena Coyle is another character to play a reasonably large part in this book. She is Creed's researcher and PA I suppose. The story follows the waiting room which is located within Stride's land, and ghostly encounters of a figure who has been spotted there. Moreover, Stride can also hear sounds of distant trains approaching the waiting room. Stride employs Creed to tackle the issue and with Creed taking up his offer, finds that he may not be much of a fraud after all. 

The general premise of this book sounds like an almost box standard ghost story right? There are some extras thrown in such as Creed's background and current work status's to throw in a few unique qualities. However, upon reading this book there is so much more. There are some pretty good ideas running through this book and what is actually going on also makes the story much more unique than it once seems. Although the book is barely 300 pages long, I felt that the book managed to pack in quite a lot, but without ruining the story by having too much. I enjoyed the characters too, there was plenty of background story to make their developments, but not too much in that they over take the story. Furthermore, there wasn't too much switching between characters that the story got lost. Everything flowed in just the right places and the overall themes were great. 

The reason I only gave this book 4 stars and not 5 stars is that this book is a great read and though there isn't anything missing, I just couldn't quite give the book 5 stars. It was great, but not fantastic. This isn't a fast paced read either, it took me a little longer than some books despite not being quite long. The plot was interesting which made me read more in-depth rather than fast. 

Overall, a great ghost story for anybody who enjoys a good mystery and something a littler different. 

Happy reading :) 

0 comments:

Post a Comment