Kristen Marquette

The Creaking Tree by Kristen Marquette was an easy read at only 176 pages long. It was an "okay" book. When you read the description on the back, you get the impression that it's going to have a lot of fantasy elements to it-not so. The main character, Louisa, doesn't even get to the fantasy world til nearly halfway through the book. The fantasy part is really not the main part of the story. The main story is about Louisa's her relationship with her husband, Jason & cooking. One thing I really don't care for in books is real lengthy descriptions to set the scene. The author did a lot of unnecessary describing in the first part of the book. Even though it was an easy read, I almost stopped cause of that, but I did not..I read the whole thing.

Louisa comes off sounding like a naive spoiled brat-more naive than spoiled. And Jason, well he seemed a bit artificial. The fantasy part wasn't all that original & I'm sorry to say that the ending wasn't a surprise. Once the story enters into the fantasy part, the plot took turns as one chapter dealt with reality; then the next chapter would switch back to fantasy, then switch back again to reality, etc. The cooking took up a large portion of the book-listing various ingredients for various dishes..if you're not a cook, that'll just add to the endless pointless descriptions throughout the story. The idea of the book wasn't a bad concept-I just don't think it was presented really well. It's just not a well cooked up story-I only give it 2 stars.… (mais)