Book Review: Daughter of the Storm

Daughter of the Storm by Tina Callaghan

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I don't think I need to tell anyone that the gorgeous cover attracted me to this Irish published book. Daughter of the Storm starts out as a YA/Teen book and converts into a Horror novel at about 60% of the way through. Making it a very different read. Overall I enjoyed the story but it had some odd nuances to it at times. Some things happening out of nowhere and at other times there will be a sudden moment of gory description that feels out of place compared to the rest of the narrative.

Identity Crisis
Normally I am all over books that cross genres. However Tina Callaghan takes the reader on a primarily YA journey for 60% of the story and then gave me whiplash by swapping to horror storytelling seemingly within one page. The style actually changes, even the structure of the sentences feel different. I I almost wonder if this wasn't written in two parts originally and there was some disconnect on putting them together. So be forewarned that Daughter of the Storm ramps up quickly to some very creepy and a couple horrific moments past the halfway point.

Pretentious MC
While most of Daughter of the Storm has decent dialogue and character development I found some of the things our main gal says or thinks to be very bizarre. In the opening sequence of the book she meets a boy who is taking pictures. No other real details except what he looks like and yet our MC thinks:
"After their few minutes of acquaintance the night before, she already knew he was weird."
For the life of me I cannot figure out why she thinks this. Now I realize this statement is partially because Callaghan wants the reader to sense his quirkiness; but there must be a better way to portray that in descriptions or actions than having our main character come off as judgy and pretentious almost from the opening page. This attitude carries through parts of the story but is not consistent which makes this original thought stand-out even more. A little more intention in our main gal's thoughts would have been nice.

Sentence Structure and Grammar
I hate to pick on authors, editors or publishers, but given this book is published by a fairly well-known publishing house in Ireland, I was very disappointed in the writing quality. All the things that felt awkward or were incorrect should have been easily caught and fixed by a good editor.
This line tripped me up twice due to it's odd structure:
"All he could do was sit there and hold her hand. He thought maybe that sometimes that’s all anyone could do for anyone."
This should be a brilliant quotable line. Instead it made me think too hard and literally paused my reading to sort out what was wrong with the last sentence. This type of flaw is always such a tragic disappointment in an otherwise fairly well-written story. On more than one occassion a typo or odd grammatical choice caused me to be brought out of the well-written ambience that Callaghan creates.

Overall
The plot, characters and concept are overall well done in Daughter of the Storm and the creepy ambience worked well for me. While this is not a five-star story; it's certainly good enough for 3.5 stars. However because of the odd transitions, weird suddenness of some events and the poor editing I'm dropping this rating to 3 stars. I'd recommend it if you are really intrigued by the blurb; otherwise this one can be skipped over.
That said I will watch for Callaghan's future work as I believe there is good potential here if she is paired up with a stronger editor.

Please note: I received an eARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley. This is an honest and unbiased review.

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