2024 Reading Challenge

2024 Reading Challenge
Jill Elizabeth has read 1 book toward her goal of 285 books.
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2023 Reading Challenge

2023 Reading Challenge
Jill Elizabeth has read 5 books toward her goal of 265 books.
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Book Review: Timeless Innocents by Janis Susan May

As if knick-knacks weren’t creepy enough… Now there’s a book about them too. My review copy of Timeless Innocents was graciously provided by the good folks at Carina Press.

Timeless Innocents. Even the name is vaguely creepy, in that way that all collectibles seem to be. There’s always been something just a little off-putting about seeing shelves upon shelves of tiny little people staring back at me. Now I know why. They really are horrid little things – and not just because it takes forever to dust them.

Janis Susan May’s novella is a fanciful romp into the dark world of collectibles – and the obsession that underlies the act of collecting. Her version – Timeless Innocents – starts out banal enough. A lawyer is brought in to catalog the collection of a couple that recently died. Things don’t stay banal for long though, as our fearless heroine spends time in the house with the tiny statues (which, personally, I picture as Precious Moments blended with Hummel figurines – if they were designed by Neil Gaiman).

There are a few deviations here and there, but the story offers up pretty standard fare. The spunky young lawyer living in her dad’s shadow. The “parade of sinister characters” (quote from the book blurb) all with eerily obsessive interest in the figurines. Mysterious deaths. Noises when your back is turned. An ending that you shouldn’t see coming but somehow do anyway.

It’s not a bad little read at all. But it’s not exactly edge-of-your-seat thriller-ness either. There’s something comfortable about the story – you can see what is coming a mile away, but yet it still gives you a goosebump or two every now and again. While it didn’t scare me to the point that I had to put it down, I also wouldn’t have read it while home alone. It’s a pleasant way to spend 99 cents (on kindle) and however long it takes you to read about 25,000/so words – if your idea of pleasant leans toward the designed-by-Neil-Gaiman end of the spectrum. ๐Ÿ˜‰

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