Kristen Kaltenberg Kaltenberg itibaren Bunya QLD, 澳大利亚
The Raising was my first book by Laura Kasischke and I must say she made a very good impression on me. The writing was so good, it was enough to make me like this book. Some parts even managed to give me the creeps. (But I guess it's not that hard when you're reading on a bed in a cheap hotel at 3 o'clock in the morning.) The academic world of Godwin Honors Hall was well built and the characters were charming and easy to connect with. My favourite one was Perry, I found his inner restlessness sad and sweet at the same time. On the other side, Nicole and Josie were two of the most irritating characters I've read of lately and I'm sure I won't miss them at all. The story was one of the most intriguing and well-thought I've ever read, everything perfectly fit together and it took me a while to understand that, because there were so many questions, so many dead ends, so many twists that it was hard to keep up with the pace. The end was a bit rushed and, well, not properly an end, since it didn't say anything about the mystery, but it was nice to see how the characters' lives had gone on after all their tragedies (which were all caused by a sorority. Which, if you think about it, is creepy. And sad.) I recommend this book to the fans of mystery, in particular the ones set in colleges, and to the lovers of the world of the dead and the undead - though not in the supernatural way.
There was a lot I really liked about the book (stylistically, but after a while, some of that got a little device-y), but I just didn't get the ghost thing at all, and that was the biggest drawback, in my opinion. At first I thought it was just Lia's starvation that was making her hallucinate (and that prob would've worked). But then she started interacting with the ghost . . . . and Lia became a girl who seemed much more psychotic (and therefore really messed up) than a girl with an extreme eating disorder. And then I had some nitpicks about the whole friend/eating disorder dynamic that just didn't ring true. But, in all, a very haunting read. And a story that has staying power well after the book is read.