The publishing company that sent Ashes to Ashes by Sara Clancy did not want me to miss any of the horror/adventure so they were kind enought to send me books 1 and 2 so I would not have to guess what had gone on before. I am not a big fan of horror books and I don't think I have read any since Poe in high school, but this sure was a horror story. I have never seen 3 people (Henry, Anna and Jezebel) that had more trouble and more horrible things happen to them in the span of about 48 hours. The story seemed to drag on simply to be able to cause more torture and mayhem to these three individuals. There were times I was not sure I could finish the books, but that is me. Not a true horror fan. For the person who loves a good horror story, here you go. Plenty of creepy, plenty of pain, plenty of hopelessness, and plenty of incredulous unfortunate happenstance. All works out to an unpredictable conclusion. So not a bad read, just not my cup of tea. But if this is your genre you will certainly be horrified. I do think in time Sara will be a horror writer to contend with. ( )

The story line is a great concept. However, I think a different author may have done a better job.

Having said that, I do sincerely thank the publisher for sending all three stories in the series. The third would have been wholly and completely unable to be understood without the context of the first two. Personally, I think this would have been better as one book, rather than three small stories. The unnecessary filler could be removed and it would be just the right length for a book.

I have to say the editing on this book was absolutely, unforgivably horrendous. You could barely go more than a page or two before running into another mistake. There were pages that had several errors on them. Nothing makes me angrier than an author/editor that has so little respect for their readers as to turn out what is essentially a spit in the face. It's nothing more than a way to take money for a substandard product. It's shameful.

As for the story, as I said, the premise of the story is awesome. I don't think the author took enough time to really think it through and make it a robust tale. I have to say, I was thoroughly unconvinced that the characters would still be moving around with the types of injuries they had sustained. Adrenaline, will to live, whatever - the injuries were still too severe. The explanation that was given just wasn't believable. There were also several things that just made no sense as to why they were even brought up. There was no reason for them, nothing connecting them to the story, no resolution or reasoning later on for them.

The author did end it on a nice little segue for yet another series of these stories. I, for one, will not be reading them. I would also suggest the author fire her current editor and hire a competent one before releasing anything else to the unwitting public. ( )

When I read the description of this series I was really interested. A group of people on a sight-seeing cruise off of the coast of Italy get stranded on a island haunted by plague doctors and demonic creatures after a ghost ship sinks their boat. Yes, that sounded good to me, so this is a hard review to write.

Basically it all got worse for me throughout the series, and it wasn't great to begin with. I like the story but the writing itself is what ruined it for me. A huge amount of the books are our characters trying to accomplish a task such as: climbing up a ladder; navigating through a room or a hallway; crawling through a tunnel. It's them doing something like that, and it being stretched out waaaay too much. You have to go through how a character or characters feel about whats happening, and then some dialogue, and then more description, and then more thoughts from a character, and then maybe some more description and then eventually then get from point A to B. It just got exhausting and I found myself skimming a lot of it and I am not the type of person to skim anything.

I also had a hard time visualizing what was happening most of the time. The author seemed more focused on using similes and metaphors and flowery/unnecessarily expressive writing. Everything was coursing through their veins like boiling mercury or blood turning to ice or slithered down her spine like a snake or whatever and all the while I'm just trying to figure out what's going on.

One more thing I'll rant about is something that some people might be into but I am decidedly not and it's the whole element of these stories where the characters are basically miserable the whole time. They're covered in oil and exhausted and have broken bones and terrible headaches and boils and burns and just miserable. There's a lot of just them getting hurt and being in pain and oh look what's her name is being basically tortured again and in agony and I personally don't enjoy that aspect especially considering how much of these books revolved around it. It's just not a good time for me.

I feel really bad leaving such bad review and rating! but I won this series in a giveaway in exchange for an honest review so I'm going to be honest.

Thank you to LibraryThing and Scare Street Publishing for the early review copy. ( )

This series was really good and the ending was great. It was spooky and creepy and made me want to turn on all the lights. The backstory of the island and what the plague doctors and ghosts were doing was pretty interesting. I would've liked a bit more on that and less on the trio getting constantly hurt until they can't even walk. I did like those dangerous parts, it was just a bit much sometimes. But overall I loved the series and it was super fun to read. ( )

Decent premise, but flawed execution. Honestly, I would've put this down partway through (or even partway through book 1) if I hadn't made a commitment to review it.

Others have already commented on the numerous proofreading errors, so I won't harp on that here, except to point out that it takes the reader out of the story when they have to stop to puzzle out what word the author really meant to use. I will send the publisher a list of the typos I caught, as they requested, but the fact that the first two books don't seem to have been fixed yet makes me doubt it will do any good.

There are two main female characters, and the story switches frequently between their points of view, often without anything in the way of a break or warning. Careless use of pronouns makes it hard to tell who's who, and I often had to scroll back a bit to figure out who was talking. Not that it really mattered all that much - the character development was pretty minimal, so about the only thing to differentiate them was that one had medical training and injured hands. Since I didn't get to know them, it was hard to feel invested in what happened to them. Even more so for the other survivors, most of whom didn't even get names and inexplicably appeared and disappeared at different points in the story.

The action and panic was pretty much nonstop. Which might sound like a good thing, but it was actually exhausting for the reader and the characters. They kept racing from one crisis to another, with no time to catch their breath or regroup, accumulating injuries that made them scream in pain but somehow never stopped them from doing what they needed to do. I get that adrenaline can help you push through, but after days of no food or sleep or chance to rest, your body will give out, no matter what your mind says. Totally not credible that they were able to endure the physical punishment described, let alone still sprint every time someone yelled "Run!"

The writing was somewhat confusing and disjointed in general, such that I repeatedly had to scroll back to figure out what was going on. "Wait, I thought they were on the rescue boat - how'd they get on the ghost ship?" or "She's talking to Jez - when did Jez get there? I thought she was somewhere else."

Like I said, the basic plot was reasonably inventive, but it was not overall an enjoyable read and I would not really recommend it. ( )