Title: Aftermath
Author: Dyna
Type: Fiction
Page Count/Review Word Count: 276
Rating: 5/10
Aftermath is a weird one – it claims to be based upon a true story and is classified as a ‘biography‘ on the rear cover, and yet the story follows the author as she grew up, and her experiences with a spirit. I tried really hard to get into it, but it was a struggle.
One of the main problems as I saw it was that the ‘spirit’ was presumably meant to be sinister and scary, but it felt as though the threat never really developed. There were also quite a few cliches throughout, and a lot of formatting mistakes, typos and other little errors that interrupt you while you’re reading.
Now, it is true that perhaps this isn’t necessarily my favourite genre anyway, but I do like to give everything a go and I feel that, if anything, it helps me to shed the rose-tinted glasses and look at a piece of work objectively. Here, I think that a professional editor is needed, but I also think that I still wouldn’t have enjoyed reading this too much purely because of the subject matter.
However, there is something to be said for the author’s use of the Yorkshire dialect – it often feels forced when people try to write dialogue with a dialect, but Dyna has managed to pull it off pretty well. Of course, it does have the same effect that Irvine Welsh’s use of dialect does – it makes it more difficult to read – but it also forces you to think, which is a good thing. But I don’t recommend it.