C A Wittman

Sara is an adopted child who is only allowed out of the house to attend school, and rarely at that. After having recovered from a mysterious illness she is still given doses of a strange medicine that her mother didn't get from a doctor. After her recovery she is somehow changed, and animals including her once beloved dog seem to hate her. When 4 children arrive to spend a month in her home, Sara is told they are her cousins even though her parents have never spoken to her about any relatives in the past. The children are unnaturally pale and are never to be fed. They burn easily in sunlight and are to subsist only on "medicine." Jenny, the daughter of one of the school teachers, forms an uneasy alliance with the school bully Sunami to try to help Sara and find out what is really going on in her house.
This YA horror was a bit longer than it needed to be and because of that the story dragged at times. Much of the dialogue was phonetically spelled and used odd word choices to reflect that English was not the first language of several characters and this did not work in favor of the book, but the story itself was quite creative and the cousins were creepy.
3 and a half stars rounded up to 4 out of 5

I received a complimentary copy for review.… (más)

The Curse of Sara Douroux is definitely a case of a book being better in theory than in execution. While I can appreciate what C. A. Wittman was trying to do, the story just got away from her. There were too many ideas forced to fit into one story, and there wasn’t enough space for all of them.

Wittman did do an excellent job of setting the scene for her story, and the use of region specific language really brought her characters to life. Her descriptions of the various locations made it possible to really see where everything was taking place. Her attempt at creating a new version of a traditional “monster” is also admirable, if poorly executed. She seemingly had too many ideas she wanted to incorporate, and the result is confusing and jumbled. I just finished the book, and honestly have no idea what happened at the end, or in several scenes from the book. Unfortunately, this is not one I would recommend.… (más)