Check the Shelf: The Love curse of the Rumbaughs Review

  Summary (From Goodreads)

On an unseasonably warm Easter Sunday, a young girl named Ivy discovers a chilling secret in the basement of the Rumbaugh pharmacy across the street from the hotel where she lives with her mother. The discovery reveals a disturbing side to the eccentric lives of family friends Abner and Adolph Rumbaugh, known throughout their small western Pennsylvania town simply as the Twins. It seems that Ab and Dolph have been compelled by a powerful mutual love for their deceased mother to do something extraordinary, something that in its own twisted way bridges the gap between the living and the dead. Immediately, Ivy’s discovery provokes the revelation of a Rumbaugh family curse, a curse that, as Ivy will learn over the coming years, holds a strange power over herself and her own mother.

Shannan’s Summary

Ivy discovers the first secret of the Rumbaugh twins as a child, the second as a teen, and makes her own secret as an adult.

First Off…

The synopsis intrigued me along with the cover, and it was a dollar on Book Outlet so I figured I give it a shot.

Thoughts:

So, this was a weird book for me.  I kept reading thinking it can’t end the way I think it will, and then it ended the way I thought it would.  The story was intriguing, but there wasn’t much too it.  I kept thinking something more will happen, or something, but in the end it was simply what it was.

 Part of why it felt weird is that as far as the story complexity goes, it felt like a middle grade book, but as far as what the book was about, I thought it was more young/new adult.  I think it’s because it switches between the main character being a child and a teenager.  But I wouldn’t want my middle grader reading this book.  I don’t even think I care to have read it.

 The book summery intrigued me, but If I had read some of the blurbs I might not have read it, since it compares the book to Edgar Allen Poe style of writting, which I’ve never been a huge fan.

In the End

I don’t really know what to say.  I was a well written book, and I finished it, but at the end of the day, it was totally not my style of story, and I’m not really sure what type of reader to recommend it too.  I guess go with the book blurbs and check it out if you like Poe.

10 Second Summary:

1. Strange story dealing with love and death: The main topics through the book are love and death, with the main characters doing taxidermy as a hobby.
2. Middle grade level reading with a much older story: It’s an easy read (4th or 5th grade level) with an older level of story, probably High school.
3. Just weird:  It’s been almost a month since I finished it, and I still don’t know how I feel.

Don’t bother.  I’ll be giving this one away probably.  Totally not something I need to keep around.  Glad I only spent a dollar on it.