The Accident Season | Moira Fowley-Doyle

72/100

It's the accident season, the same time every year. Bones break, skin tears, bruises bloom.

The accident season has been part of seventeen-year-old Cara's life for as long as she can remember. Towards the end of October, foreshadowed by the deaths of many relatives before them, Cara's family becomes inexplicably accident-prone. They banish knives to locked drawers, cover sharp table edges with padding, switch off electrical items - but injuries follow wherever they go, and the accident season becomes an ever-growing obsession and fear.

But why are they so cursed? And how can they break free?

+1 Cover Design

I'm not a huge fan of the cover. The aesthetic is cool, but I don't think it completely meshes with the plot and the concept of the book. It's a mysterious and almost creepy cover but something about it just doesn't appeal to me.

+4 Writing Style

I didn't have any significant problems with the writing style. Nothing bad about it, but nothing spectacular.

+2 Plot Development

To be completely honest, I didn't understand the arc of this storyline. I thought the majority of the book would focus on the accident season and unraveling the past behind it. And while we did get to the root of the accident season, there were too many other plot lines crammed into one, stand-alone two-hundred page book. I think that the storyline should have been more concentrated on the accident season. It would have made for a fluid and clearer story.

+2 Character Relations

I'm extremely conflicted on how I feel about this aspect. The relationships aren't something I would necessarily ship, but I wasn't completely repulsed by them.

Aside from the romantic relationship, the interactions between the mother and the children were mildly contradictory. A large part of this story was planning a party in a haunted house in the middle of the woods. Now I don't know about you, but if there was a season when the likelihood of the potential death of my children was fairly high, I wouldn't allow a party like this. Honestly a party in the woods seems dangerous on its own, add a season full of accidents and deaths, and it becomes a wish for death.

+3 Character Development

I found little to no character development throughout the book but I would attribute that to the storyline. There was nothing Cara had to grow from and change for, so she didn't. She got a more accepting throughout the book, but other than that there were no dramatic changes to her character.

+3 Likability of Protagonist

I was completely neutral to Cara. I didn't love her as a character, nor could I relate to her, but I didn't outright hate her.

+2 Necessity of Minor Characters

There were one or two minor characters that were crucial to the plot line, but other than that, I didn't really feel a need for the minor characters. They all had their own individual stories and didn't really serve to help the plot line.

+2 Setting Description

There was no constant setting, and again I felt like they didn't necessarily correlate with each other. The flow of location wasn't as clear as it could have been.

+1 Interesting Storyline

Like I mentioned before the storyline was too crammed for my liking. Because of this I didn't find the storyline as compelling as I would have liked to. Before going into this book I thought it was a contemporary, but it ended up having themes of fantasy and mystery as well, which I didn't particularly love.

+2 Predictability

I called the ending way before it happened. I mean what's the point of introducing a seemingly random character at the beginning unless they're going to play a significant role in the end. There were no big plot twists, or anything that made this book particularly original or unique.

+50 Finished

Final Total: 72; C-

Overall I didn't love this book. It definitely could have used more concentration in the central plot line and more development on the characters. I went into it with different expectations, expecting a contemporary novel, which ending being more fantasy/mystery. While I didn't love it, if you're looking for a dark, heavy read, I would give this book a try.