Blog Tour: The Requiem Red by Brynn Chapman

Item: The Requiem Red
Rating: 3
Author: Lillian

Posted April 15, 2016 by Lillian in Features, Reviews / 1 Comment

I received this book via Prism Book Tours. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of this review.

Blog Tour: The Requiem Red by Brynn Chapman

The Requiem Red by Brynn Chapman
Published by Month9Books on 2016-04-05
Length: 299 pages
Reviewing eARC from Prism Book Tours
Rating:

Patient Twenty-nine.

A monster roams the halls of Soothing Hills Asylum. Three girls dead. 29 is endowed with the curse…or gift of perception. She hears messages in music, sees lyrics in paintings. And the corn. A lifetime asylum resident, the orchestral corn music is the only constant in her life.

Mason, a new, kind orderly, sees 29 as a woman, not a lunatic. And as his belief in her grows, so does her self- confidence. That perhaps she might escape, might see the outside world.

But the monster has other plans. The missing girls share one common thread...each was twenty-nine's cell mate.

Will she be next?

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Review

I’m not really sure how I feel about Brynn Chapman‘s The Requiem Red. It’s not at all like I expected and I’d dare say that the synopsis is misleading. I was expecting a historical fiction with a paranormal twist. Well I got that, but the paranormal was on the light side and after reading one chapter I already knew the ending. Disappointing!

Patient 29, also known as Jane, has been a patient at Soothing Hills Sanatorium for as long as she can remember. She sees colors in music and with the color red she hears words. Everyone thinks she is crazy, but really Jane is a virtuoso of music. She composes through her drawings and can look at a piece of music once and be able to play it perfectly. Jane is haunted and tortured by her time at Soothing Hills. Now her roommates are disappearing one by one to the monster that roams the halls and a new orderly is taking a shine to Jane bringing her light in the darkness.

I like how the author explored two characters with synesthesia and showed that despite their disorders they could still be considered “normal.” The girls just saw the world differently and it was interesting to read from their POVs as they experienced their environment.

I had a hard time though with 2 things in particular: the romance and the head hopping. Because I don’t want to spoil anything, I’ll only say one small thing about the romance….it didn’t make sense to me. One of the characters had previously had a crush on another and then all of a sudden declares love for the other. The other romantic interest was too insta-love for me. Then there was the head-hopping. The POV changed SO many times that I had a hard time figuring out whose head I was in. With the head-hopping there were time issues, like a character seemed to be in two places at once when in reality the scenes were happening at different times. So confusing! Because of this I had a hard time connecting with any of the characters and the story itself dragged out.

Overall I wasn’t that impressed with the book. I had high hopes going in but the constant head hopping and the non-paranormal paranormal theme really dashed them. HOWEVER I did enjoy the historical period and the setting of Soothing Hills. If I was to put the book in a genre it would be historical, gothic romance with no mention of paranormal. That’s just me though.

Final Conclusion:

About Brynn Chapman

Born and raised in western Pennsylvania, Brynn Chapman is the daughter of two teachers. Her writing reflects her passions: science, history and love—not necessarily in that order. In real life, the geek gene runs strong in her family, as does the Asperger’s syndrome. Her writing reflects her experience as a pediatric therapist and her interactions with society’s downtrodden. In fiction, she’s a strong believer in underdogs and happily-ever-afters. She also writes non-fiction and lectures on the subjects of autism and sensory integration and is a medical contributor to online journal The Age of Autism.