This is a horror novel suitable for mature young adults and
up.
Blaire and Travis are two young Americans on a care aid
program to Borslav and will be looking after orphans at St Sebastian's. On
arrival they realise that their year abroad will be no picnic - Borslav is a
cold and desolate place and the locals don't seem to want them there. When they
finally reach the orphanage they are shocked by the condition of the children. Malnourished,
lacking education and some children with physical defects is just the start;
fresh injuries spring up each day and the children are scared to death. The two
set to work in their roles as teacher and nurse, but as the days go by more and
more strange things start to happen. Humming and scraping is heard at night and
the constant whispering of threats from the basement threaten to implode their
sanity. As they dig deeper to find the origin of the supposed curse on the
orphanage, they are met with info so shocking that their lives are in danger.
Can they save themselves from the cycle being repeated?
This had the promise of a really good horror but I was
disappointed by its predictability. I was hoping to be surprised by the ending
but it turned out exactly as I thought it would. The editing had me grimacing -
from spelling errors in simple words, to spelling towns in different ways in
the same chapter, to using verbose outdated adjectives and even having
different POVs in the same paragraph with no breaks. To me the bullying, her
parents' deaths and the self harm didn't tie in with the whole story enough. It
was like being fed a clue and then not following through on it. It was a good
effort but the story could not pull off the proper horror aspect.
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