Independent and traditionally published authors love it when a reader takes the time to make an online comment about their work that’s totally unsolicited.
It’s even better when they write a lengthy piece that breaks down the story into its components so other readers can understand it better.
‘…couldn’t put it down,’ she says and covered far more ground in her review than I ever expected. (see the original review at the bottom of this page)
For those who are new to playing the home game, SEETHINGS is one of my novels. It’s dark fiction based around a photographer’s sexless marriage, five innocent victims, and a series of summer thunderstorms.
This reviewer decided to say something without any encouragement and then gave it a score. She lives in Nebraska, and I’m in Australia. These two places are about as far apart as they can be. I know nothing of the person who wrote the piece.
I copied the review and posted it below! -Michael
BethK rated it – it was amazing – While this book starts out slow featuring an especially, unlikable drunken boor as the focus of the first chapter, and a couple of chapters following which did not seem to flow, leaving me confused, I persevered reading. I’m very glad that I did! The book became difficult to put down, and it was not until well into the book that we see how the boorish character from the first chapter fits into the story. By that time, I was unable to put the book down.
A significant side-plot of the protagonist’s steamy affair, entered into because of his unhappy, sexless marriage – one which looks good on the outside – with his wife talking about plans for pregnancy and children, a nice home – is anything but that inside the relationship. The husband and wife are in counseling with a Christian counselor who is not even touching on the actual problems with their relationship.
The protagonist kidnaps and terrorizes this counselor for wasting his time and money, while his wife is utterly enamored with him.
Thunderstorms play a key role in the plot of the story. The protagonist and his wife are visiting a couple of their friends, and a description of their home coming down around them. The protagonist gets everyone to safety – although he does not remember his heroic rescue – but merely the menacing presence in the home during the disaster. There are bodies discovered after these storms which have often been dead for some time, with most of the evidence of how they happened or where. Is there one serial killer on the loose, several, or are these murders unrelated? Chasing these thunderstorms for photography is a passion, plus a cover under which the protagonist can visit his lover.
Seethings vividly explores the depression, despair, and crazy-making of life in a sexless marriage. The wife keeps saying they are “trying” to make a baby, saying that this “trying to get pregnant” is “going well”, although there’s been “no luck” – probably because they’re not having sex. She says the “timing” is not right. The protagonist is quite misogynistic, but how his wife acts, how his lover acted regarding her husband and marriage, it is quite evident how he came to these opinions. Feminism is thought to be a very ugly thing, and why he thinks that way is unsurprising from how he was brought up and how he’s seen women act.
This was a very good book. I would certainly not recommend it for anyone under 18 because of its adult language, themes, and scenes.
Discover more from Michael Forman – Author of Dark Fiction & Drama
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.