“3.0 out of 5.0 stars! I recommend giving The Taking of Annie Thorne a shot if you are into paranormal mysteries. I had fun with this novel overall, and the deeper idea it exposes is a compelling one.”
~ No spoilers are in the following review ~
The Taking of Annie Thorne by C.J. Tudor is a 355 page fiction novel written in active, first-person narrative. The reader adventures through the past and present in the eyes of Joey Thorne, Annie’s older brother, who has received an anonymous and haunting message, a message that has brought up mysterious happenings and painful memories of his sisters disappearance from years ago.
Never having heard of the author, C.J. Tudor before, I took a chance with his work and purchased this novel from Waterstones (the UK equivalent to Barnes and Nobel). What compelled me to spend 8.99 on this book was the summary on the back that read:
“THEN
One night, my little sister went missing. There were searches, appeals. everyone thought the worse. And then, miraculously, she came back. She couldn’t, or wouldn’t, say what had happened. But she wasn’t the same afterwards. She wasn’t my Annie. Sometimes my own little sister scared me to death. . .
NOW
The email arrives in my inbox: I know what happened to your sister. ‘Its happening again. . .'”
The summary provides suspense, mystery and sympathy; all of the things that a reader needs to be intrigued.
I was sold, as was the book.
As I made my way through the first few chapters, however, my interest began to wan. Joey was starting to get on my nerves with his apathetic moodiness, and though I appreciated the contrast between his love for being a teacher and his hard-shelled attitude born from his own teenage experiences, I felt that the personality dynamic wasn’t quite what I wanted it to be. I was searching for more reasons to like the character, but instead I was left more involved in the superstitions than the narrator himself. I found he only started to truly come alive in the second half of the book.
The second half of the book was where I began to get invested again. Hard truths were revealed, the showing of past memories became a vivid and engaging plot device, and Annie’s story truly started to come alive. Still, Annie’s story felt as if she were a side plot made to justify the paranormal aspects of the books while I was being dragged alongside the hidden agendas of the adult characters.
Even so, I wanted to know what happened to Annie. C.J. Tudor convinced me that Annie mattered, and that even though Joey was a bit unimpressive, I wanted to ride this story with him in order to find out what had happened to her.
In the end, the climax and resolution, I admit, left me a bit dissatisfied. I still had questions after I closed the book, and some of the events that happened were convenient and quick, as if to wrap things up in a hurry.
I found that the scenes in this novel that I enjoyed the most were the ones when Joey was a teenager and the ones where Annie was present, and those made the other, not-so-convincing scenes worth a read.
This story is a pretty easy to get through, the kind of story you want if you’re looking for something uncomplicated to fill the time.
As a reader and a fellow writer I give this novel 3.0 out of 5.0 stars! I recommend giving The Taking of Annie Thorne a shot if you are into paranormal mysteries. I had fun with this novel overall, and the deeper idea it exposes is a compelling one.
