Projections by S.E. Porter

Source: Netgalley, thank you to the publisher!
TL;DR: I do not know who to recommend this too unless you can look past the bloat and ride it out just for the revenge.

Plot: A young woman is murdered and tethered to her murderer as a ghost and must find a way to get revenge.
Characters: These were fantastic, I actually loved and hated these characters enough to finish this.
Setting: Fascinating, though the magic that made up the world needed a little sharpening.
Magic: This needed a little work for how much it was used and referenced, but there were some great ideas here.

Thoughts:

Can I say I enjoyed this book? No, I don’t think I can. Will I still look for and try S.E. Porter books in the future? Probably. Let me explain.

This book has some fantastic ideas and the setup was great. Catherine, our primary PoV is a ghost, murdered and then tethered to her murderer. From here we see alternating points of view, both her past and her present. We also have the view of a man named Gus and how he is connected to Catherine while he is bent to this drive to find a mysterious ‘her’.

Again, love the setup and the initial 40% of this, I was super absorbed and sucked in. Unfortunately this was so bloated with so much unnecessary backstory and history that it really detracted from the story. Catherine suffers, both in the past and present, a relentless string of abuses. I was angry for her to begin with, she already deserved all the support and I wanted her to have her revenge already, so why did I need to see her treated so badly repeatedly? At 45% I was certain I was nearly done till I checked my actual pages/percentages and was flabbergasted.

So much of this was so strong but it floated like a balloon (or in this case like a wailing ghost) in circles for 200 too many pages. Because of this Catherine’s story just didn’t hit. I also wonder about the effectiveness of some of the other themes and statements that were touched on in the book as they felt like set pieces (likely due to the bloat).

So overall, yes. I love what S.E. Porter came up with here. I think with a tighter edit and some trimming this could have been a favorite. So I’ll keep an eye on this author moving forward and hope she continues to grow. Do I recommend this one, maybe not. But I think she is an author to watch.