Happy St. Patrick's Day! Today's post is a perfect fit for the holiday...
Blurb
Calla
left her life behind, haunted by a curse she cannot control. She
seeks refuge in the land of a thousand hellos, Ireland, for a fresh
start—a place where no one knows who or what she is.
Colm
fled from Clonmara seven long years ago, but now it’s his father’s
birthday, and the clan has gathered to celebrate the ould one. Each
day brings back the memories that ruined him.
Saoirse
dwells in the shadows of a lost love, unwilling to move on and unable
to forget. The crystals say one thing, but the cold, hard truth tells
another.
Ciarán
walked away from the woman he loved for the fun, for the craic. He
didn’t realize that one rash decision would impact the lives of so
many, least of all his own.
Four
broken hearts, brought together by the thread of love.
Excerpt
“Aren’t
you the curious one? You know what they say…curiosity killed the
cat.” She clenched her fingers, then released them. “I inherited
a property outside of town from a relative I didn’t know I had.”
“Here
in Ireland?” I couldn’t hide my surprise. I had so many
questions. I sensed she would shut me down if I pushed too hard.
She
reminded me of a hummingbird––her movements were quick yet fluid.
The melodic hum of her voice awakened every nerve in my icy heart. My
sweating palms made holding the steering wheel difficult. Those
physical reactions were unfamiliar to me. Long ago moments flashed
through my mind, happy times when love mattered. Life changed me into
something else, someone I didn’t recognize.
“Abracadabra,
right? It's one of those Faerie tale kinds of things. What brings you
back to Ireland?” She shifted in the bucket seat. She crossed her
legs, then uncrossed them.
Her
every action spelled trouble.
“The
ould one turned seventy last week. My father,” I said, answering
her curious gaze. “Tell me, who was your relative? If you don’t
mind me asking?”
My
fingers itched to tame that glossy mane, to smooth the cowlick
swirling the crown of her head. Her high cheekbones, elegant jawline,
and pointed chin were testaments to the remarkable features of a
people who once called Ireland their own—a people who prized
physical strength and revered intelligence—an ancient civilization
that battled for our homelands. Those memories had long since faded
into the mists of time.
Review
by Lisabet Sarai
Calla
Sweet returns to her native Ireland to claim an inheritance from a
mysterious relative. She doesn’t know what awaits her in the
Emerald Isle, but she figures she has little to lose. Her former life
in Canada has imploded, her promising TV career scuttled by her
propensity to lose control and make wild, dire predictions that often
come true. She suffers from visions and terrors, trances that
fracture reality and sudden knowledge arising from unknown sources.
When
a flock of wayward sheep sends her rental car careening into a
treacherous bog, she is rescued by Colm O’Donnell, a fellow exile
returned to Ireland for his father’s birthday. Despite her
determination to remain aloof in order to protect her privacy and her
sanity, she feels a powerful connection with the handsome, enigmatic
Irishman.
Before
she knows it, her life and her emotions are entangled with the
O’Donnell family and their close friends. In particular, she’s
drawn to Saoirse, proprietor of the town pub and a self-avowed witch,
who mourns the disappearance of her true love, Colm’s brother
Ciaran. No one has seen Ciaran for years. Calla, straddling as she
does the mundane and the magical, converses with the lost brother and
concludes that he’s a prisoner of the Other Folk, the Faerie beings
the Irish people both revere and fear.
I’ve
never visited Ireland, though it’s on my bucket list, but after
reading The Scald Crow, I have incredibly vivid impressions of
the Irish landscape, both natural and human-made. The novel brims
with glorious description. Ms. Park also does a fantastic job
capturing the cadence of the language and the social rhythms of a
tightly knit village society. Clonmarra and its environs come to life
as she details the sights, sounds and tastes (yes, there’s a lot
mouth-watering food!) that Calla encounters in her new home.
The
author also excels in capturing subtle shifts in emotion. The
darkness haunting Calla feels real and compelling, even if she (and
we the readers) do not really understand it. Likewise, Saoirse’s
grief at the loss of her love strikes to the heart, intense and
believable.
Set
against these positive aspects, I have to say that I found the plot
of this novel rather incoherent and some of the characters
disturbingly inconsistent. In particular, Calla’s interactions with
Colm seem very strange. One moment she is acting reticent and
cautious, an understandable reaction given her uncertainty about her
mental state as well as her much-mentioned virginity. The next
moment, she is flirtatious and challenging, her dialogue full of
slang and pet names. It feels as though she has a split personality,
which I don’t believe was the author’s intention.
Colm
behaves in an equally inconsistent manner, first hot then cold,
though this is partially explicable by the magical shifts of reality
he experiences in Calla’s presence. When he unexpectedly morphs
into a classic romance Dom, taking control of her orgasms and acting
like he’d channeling Christian Grey, I could only shake my head.
This did not, in my opinion, enhance the story.
Meanwhile,
it gradually becomes clear that Calla is half-Faerie, but honestly I
could not figure out what that meant in terms of her powers or her
personal experience. She sees people’s deaths, like the legendary
Banshee; she transports Colm to illusory worlds; she has scary
out-of-body experiences. How does all this relate to her heritage?
Even magical worlds need rule and constraints. Hanna Park is silent
about what Faeries can and cannot do, and what abilities Calla has
inherited.
Finally,
other readers might have different definitions, but the abrupt end of
this novel felt a lot like a cliff hanger to me. Almost nothing is
explained, and nothing is resolved. I found this quite unsatisfying.
In
short, reading The Scald Crow was a mixed experience. I really
enjoyed the world-building, but I wish the characters and plot had
been equally coherent and believable.
About
the Author
I
began my writing career in the pre-dawn of a winter morning while my
husband snored like a train. We could call my husband the catalyst.
If it weren’t for him, I would never have gone to the kitchen to
make a pot of coffee, feed the cat, and sit on the loveseat in front
of the fire. It was there, in those moments of wondrous quiet, that I
did something I had never thought possible. I opened my laptop, and
while the coffee went cold, I wrote a story. My husband had no idea
that these sojourns to the loveseat in front of the fire would become
a daily occurrence, that writing would become an obsession, but the
cat knew. She knows everything.
Author
Website: https://www.hannapark.ca
Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/hannaparkwrites
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/hanna.park.1485537
Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/Scald-Crow-Beyond-Faerie-Rath-ebook/dp/B0DS3TKLDM
Amazon
CA:
https://www.amazon.ca/Scald-Crow-Beyond-Faerie-Novel/dp/1068997591
Barnes
and Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/?ean=9781068997532
Kobo:
https://www.kobo.com/ebook/the-scald-crow-2
Hanna
Park will be awarding a $10 Amazon/BN gift card to a randomly drawn
winner.
