✱✱ Book Review ✱✱ The Visitors by Catherine Burns

We had a bit of a road trip today, which gave me plenty of reading time, but no way to review. I started the morning by finishing up Catherine Burns' The Visitors.

With the smart suspense of Emma Donoghue’s Room and the atmospheric claustrophobia of Grey Gardens, Catherine Burns’s debut novel explores the complex truths we are able to keep hidden from ourselves and the twisted realities that can lurk beneath even the most serene of surfaces.

Marion Zetland lives with her domineering older brother John in a crumbling mansion on the edge of a northern seaside resort. A timid spinster in her fifties who still sleeps with teddy bears, Marion does her best to live by John’s rules, even if it means turning a blind eye to the noises she hears coming from behind the cellar door...and turning a blind eye to the women’s laundry in the hamper that isn’t hers. For years, she’s buried the signs of John’s devastating secret into the deep recesses of her mind—until the day John is crippled by a heart attack, and Marion becomes the only one whose shoulders are fit to bear his secret. Forced to go down to the cellar and face what her brother has kept hidden, Marion discovers more about herself than she ever thought possible. As the truth is slowly unraveled, we finally begin to understand: maybe John isn’t the only one with a dark side....

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Momma Says: 2 out of 5 stars ⭐⭐

This book was not at all what I expected. Just from the blurb, I pretty well figured out who the visitors were, but this book really isn't about them. The visitors are minor characters at best, and more a nuisance to Marion than anything else. As far as her dark side, that's evident from early in the story, which does nothing to build up any kind of mystery or suspense. The only mystery here is whether these horrible people will face any form of justice. As far as characters go, I didn't find a single likable character in this book. Even the "visitors" don't elicit much empathy as we get so little about them. 
The story is dark and psychological, but it is extremely convoluted and more of a character study of Marion than anything else. We get numerous flashbacks of Marion's life, but they are in no particular order and some are tedious with the details. Then, we get emails at random that are easy enough to figure out, but again, they are rather random. The worst parts for me were the details of Marion's current every day life, including an almost complete play by play of television programs that she watched. 
I finally made it to the end and I have to say that after all of that, even the ending was thoroughly unsatisfying. 

**ARC provided by NetGalley and Gallery/Scout Press



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