2015 book 237

Courtney Alameda's Shutter
Sometimes I am not really into the books we read for book club, and this was one of those times. It has an ok concept--it's basically our world, but with ghosts and undead creatures, and there's a big organization that handles them, led by the descendants of some of the great fictional monster-hunters (mainly people from Dracula). Our protagonist is a Van Helsing with a taagic backstory and a father with absolutely no redeeming qualities, a love interest whose skin color is once compared to a hazelnut and once to a five-shot latte, and a couple of other sidekicks who don't really have much in the way of personality (one is a nerd, one is a ladies' man). Everyone is super stupid, like, if you talk all the time about how Dracula might be a danger, you should maybe read the book and notice the VERY OBVIOUS clues around you, and also don't keep secrets, my god. Anyway, she and her three dude compatriots are all attacked by a powerful ghost and will die unless they exorcise it (oh, the book is called "Shutter" b/c she catches ghosts using an old-school film camera). There is a lot of action here, so things move along quickly, and I had no issues with the way things wrapped up, but the writing is pretty overly dramatic. I also personally am not into horror, but this was more on the gross/gory side than the creepy side. It's super gross at parts though. Not for me. B/B-.