Prosperity

An article by Karen    1 Comment

Prosperity by Deborah Woehr is a ghost story set in USA. It’s about a woman who finds herself stuck in one of those freaky towns in the middle of nowhere. You know the type of place I mean, where all the locals are totally mixed up or just plain crazy. That alone makes it spooky. The one thing I can definitely say about this story is that it would make me think twice about driving (or should I say stopping) at a town like this if I were ever to visit the States. That…is unlikely to happen, so I should have no fears where that’s concerned.

The author has thought out the complicated plot line really well. The characters are well developed. And the setting is true to life (or as true to life as any non-American can tell anyway).

I do, however, have two complaints about the book. First, there is a lot of sexual references and swearing. Both do fit in with the characters and the plot, so neither of these things are in fact wrong and I doubt they could be called gratuitous, but for me it was too much. It all comes down to personal taste. Second, the third chapter (I think) introduced a lot of characters all at once and I became totally confused. My mind isn’t what it used to be, so it might just be me. I really don’t know. It took a while to work out who was doing what after that, which distracted me from the story, but once I got the characters sorted I settled back into the plot and the events took me through to the end.

As I mentioned earlier, the plot was complicated and the author did an awesome job bringing it all together. There was a nice (definitely not the right word for this story, but I don’t want to give anything away in case you are intending to read the book) twist near the end that I didn’t see coming, followed by a moment of uncertainty where I wasn’t sure what I wanted to happen. That moment left me thinking about choices we might make if we were thrown in a similar situation.

If you like a well written ghost story and you don’t mind swearing, then you should consider reading this book.