Three-Sentence Book Review: Sundial by Catriona Ward

"It fixates heavily on the lifelong damage that early-onset traumatic circumstances can inflict on a person's psyche while also weaving a unique thriller narrative set in an almost alien real-world setting (an isolated desert compound). The momentum of the book is strongly undermined by the monotone first-person delivery, and the characters are almost too detached from "normal" to relate to until the book reveals their full backstories at the conclusion. The first and last forty pages are gripping, but the middle 200 are a slog to get through."

-Jake Hunter, semi-professional literary critic

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The Bottom Line (Spoiler-Free)

It's a book about a mother and a daughter revisiting the site of the mother's upbringing. It starts off very intriguing, but spends a gratuitous amount of time developing a backstory that could be adequately described in twenty pages or less.

I would not recommend this book if you're expecting a tense thriller. This is more of a slow burn that becomes interesting only after all the pieces are put together at the end. To some, that is enjoyable, but I would argue that the payoff is still not momentous enough to justify the meandering path it takes to reach that point.