Oh it's been a long old time since I've done a proper book review! Now this is only my second book of the new year (if you've seen my goodreads challenge you'll know how many I intend to read...), and I couldn't have picked a weirder one off the shelves if I had tried.
I'm not actually sure how I acquired this book, despite the Waterstones sticker that I'm scared to remove, it's got all the markings (further stickers) of a charity shop find. I'm 70% sure this is something my Grandma will have picked up for me due to the vaguely supernatural vibes the synopsis gives off, but I haven't a clue. I think this nicely sums up how I felt about this book actually, 'I haven't a clue'.
The Uninvited Guests gives a promise of Victorian times and an insight into how the upper class, who are soon to demote into the lower class, scrabble to keep their place. It also screams spooky but the blurb doesn't give away much. Now I was gunning for ghosts, that would have been fun, especially to lighten up the drab characters we had been following around for the majority of the book. But we seemed to have taken a sharp turn somewhere and ended up with reanimated corpses. I might have missed something, but I don't think I did, and that turn gave me whiplash. Don't get me wrong, the premise of this book is great, right up my street, but the execution? Something to be desired.
My only thought throughout the whole thing was 'I hope the kitten survives', as usually when an adorable young thing like that is introduced something bad happens. I was prepared to banish this book half read if anything happened. Luckily, the kitty survived.
I'm sorry Sadie, but it reads as if you've mashed two different books together right at the end. At 354 pages (my copy anyway) it was a relatively short book, and not the worst I have ever read (that spot is taken by The Necropolis Railway by Andrew Martin, I so wanted to like that book!), but despite being somewhat hooked about halfway through by my need to have Emerald and Ernest get together, I was disappointed. The warning signs about what was to come next were all there, the hold Charlie seemed to have over the characters despite their unsettling feelings and want to do otherwise, the way the passengers seems to wane and grow like a mass, all having assimilated into one being. The signs were certainly there, but the reveal was poor and random.
So long story short, we jump into this story as Emerald, who is pretty much our main character, turns 20. It's her birthday and she is trying to make do. Her father died not too long ago and she misses him, her mother remarried to her bore of a stepfather who she dislikes out of principle, now they are at risk of losing their home and she is forced to depend on said step in order to keep all she has left of her dad. But despite all this, Emerald is determined to have a perfectly happy birthday and has even invited a childhood friend up to make things merry.
Things start to go wrong early on as she supposedly misinterprets John Buchanan's (a rich local man) birthday gift to her as a token of affection. He laughs at her notion and she is somewhat humiliated, but it is revealed during an insight into John's mind later that she was correct but it was a ploy to get her interested in him rather than to continue to ignore his advances. Things then continue to go a bit wrong as Patience, the childhood friend, arrives without her mother who has taken ill and instead with her brother who Emerald immediately takes a fancy to as he has grown up handsome.
The childhood friends arrive with a group of strangers, they are passengers from a brutal train accident nearby who have been sent to the house for temporary shelter. The birthday girl takes this in her stride and refuses to let it bother her, but is somewhat shallow in her class as continually forgets about these 30 or so strangers occupying space in her home.
Everything is managed and running smoothly (note we are a good 2 thirds in now) until a gentleman arrives, a casualty of the crash, and due to his first class status and alarming charm is invited to the birthday tea despite the unsettling feeling that follows him, and no one really knows why they do as he commands or let him do the things he does.
It is soon found out that Emerald's mother Charlotte has a hidden past with this stranger, one that comes to light in the most unsavory manor and ruins the birthday party as practically everyone is upset in some way yet are continuing on. John then loathes the family after this unsettling past is revealed as he feels socialising with the family is now beneath his station. The forgotten passengers are causing havoc and Charlie takes it as his cue to corner Charlotte in her bedroom.
Here it is revealed that he was in love with Charlotte back when she was a lady of the streets doing all she could to stay alive, and when she rose to riches she rebuffed him after 'borrowing' money from him and ran away with her new fairly rich husband and started a new until he came back on the scene to blackmail her.
He then rather randomly performs some amazing supernatural tricks but it doesn't quite click that he is no longer one of the living- to her at least. She screams, her family come to save her and he didnt think they would and they succeed in throwing him out of a window or something (It wasn't very clear.) after forcing him to release his hostage, Charlotte's youngest Smudge, once it is revealed she is his daughter.
During all of this Smudge has taken a pony from the stables and hidden it in her bedroom.
Charlie is then no longer a threat, Emerald cottons on that these 50 strangers cluttering her home need to be 'put to rest' as they smell and act like corpses but she and everyone else are literally still not catching on that these are something akin to zombies. Makes beds for them, then runs off and leaves them again in order to deal with getting the horse out of the house which the last chunk of the book is then dedicated to.
The next morning comes, the dead are gone leaving barely any evidence in their wake. Step dad comes home, advised family some random aunt of Charlotte's dead husband has died and left smudge and Charlotte 60 grand, aunt with the last name Beeches which was obviously Charlie in disguise, and then that 50 people were killed on a train and survivors were shipped off somewhere other than here. Only then do the fam realise they were housing 50 dead people.
The end.
I and a lot of people who have left reviews on Goodreads, 1. have no idea what we've just read and 2. feel like every single one of the characters featured in this book are hateful.
Clovis (Emerald's brother): Absolute hateful creature. Thinks he is above everyone and makes constant snide remarks as well as putting people out.
Emerald: Despite being okay and me shipping her aggressively with Ernest (I think I would have thrown the book if my OTP was not met), she was still an absent minded bitchy little girl.
Patience (the friend): Tries to keep up an air of perfection but literally always has to be right and lives to torture Clovis despite them crushing on one another.
Ernest: Aside from Smudge is actually the only decent character in this book, I liked him.
Charlotte: An airheaded, judgemental, god-awful parent who is clearly a bitch despite marrying twice for love and surprisingly not money. What with her gold-digger ways I was genuinely surprised she actually loved her husbands.
Florence: random mood swings, both above and below her station, potential to be more but actually quite boring.
Myrtle: Still not sure if she's Florence's daughter or not. Didn't get to know her much, just a filler character.
Edward: Kind step-dad, decent fellow, absolute mug.
John: Dick. Hated him. On one hand judged Charlotte and Florence so hard for their mistakes while trying to stay alive that he shunned the ENTIRE family and aimed to ruin them, in the next breath shags Florence after walking in on her washing and refusing to leave. Then changes heart and decides the fam aint so bad but won't pursue Emerald any longer as isn't as womanly as he had once thought and now he has slept with a proper woman wishes to seek out one but not Florence as she is just a maid and he needs a lady fitting of his wealth.
Smudge: Aside from Ernest the only good character. This book would have been far more successful if we'd just followed her adventures.
As I said above, this whole book would have been better if we pursued a single aspect rather than two different ones. If we had skipped the bit about the zombies and just focused on the family, the party, the scandal and the pony incident it would have been a fine book. If we had skipped all that and just focused on the passengers and the zombie bits it would have been good. If you erased everything aside from Smudge and Lady the pony's adventure this would have been a fantastic book as that was the only decent bit of this whole story. It felt unedited, it was messy and didn't make sense in places. If this was cultivated a little more it could have been something, instead it's just a thrown together nightmare.
I give The Uninvited Guests a 4/10. It wasn't massively awful, I was hooked for most of it as the writing was good, but there were so many plot holes and loose ends that I'm frustrated. This could have made a good telly series with some tweaks, but it makes a shoddy book. I'm sorry Sadie I know this is your art and you should be proud! It's just not to my taste which is a shame because I usually love stuff like this.
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