The snow child.

[stainesmassif]

How bad is it to give up on a book club book? We're meeting tomorrow night and I've read about a third, but oh. My. God. I find it dreary. I suppose that's my feedback, but I feel quite naughty just giving up relatively early in the book. What do you think? Will I be a book club black sheep?

Haha! We had such a split in opinions in our book club about The Snow Child - some were just like you and others absolutely loved it.

I have to say, it picked up a bit and, in my opinion, it was worth reading but I totally get where you're coming from.

I've always been a fast reader, but as I've got older/had children my attention span has waned. Films, books and tv programmes are all getting short shrift. (No measure of quality, btw, I just need them to be gripping in some way).

Same here - and I found myself skim reading all the descriptive bits and Oh My Goodness Mabel drove me to tears of boredom at the start, but she does get some bollocks and mans up a bit.

Maybe I should give it another go. It's the combination of gritty and magic realism that gets to me. And the sense of impending doom - but from the sounds of it, maybe the doom doesn't arrive after all.

I wouldn't go so far as to say that :) I am glad I read it though despite it annoying me throughout as it also intrigued me.

Glad I ditched it - average score of 3/10 from our group!

Bored me rigid. (or frozen). Could have been about half the length, as I got a bit peed off with the continual freeze, thaw and homespun wisdom. And the feathers on the wedding dress- I bet that smelt rank

I thought it started well actually, very bleak. Then got a bit slow and pointless (and a bit sentimental) and how annoying was that girl when she grew up?

Tbh I think there was only enough of an idea there for a short story, and trying to spin it out to novel length didn't really work.

I liked it! Am I the only one? Yes it was bleak (especially at the beginning) but got less so and turned into a proper grown up faiytale imo. I can see it would not be everyone's cup of tea, but I wouldn't give up on it solely because of the bleakness as it does get... well, not cheerful, but less bleak!

It definitely grew on me and in the end I gave it quite a high score (in my book club), but if you'd asked me 1/4 of the way in, I wouldn't have been nearly as generous.

I agree with Ephiny though that it was better suited to a short story.