Book – The House of the Scarred Backs
Author – B.A. Huntley
Star rating - ★★☆☆☆
No. of Pages – 58
Cover – Okay
POV – 3rd person, one character
Would I read it again – No
Genre – LGBT, MC, Contemporary?


** COPY RECEIVED THROUGH NETGALLEY **


I had a few problems with this one. First off, in the first two pages 'The House of the Scarred Backs' is not only repeated far too often, but it almost begins to feel as though this is the POV, because there is so much “telling” about their history and territory that it's complicated to follow and not the kind of start that would draw me into a story.

The speech is really formal. We're told that it's because of how they're taught and raised, within the MC, because they're not allowed to be influenced by media etc, but it made it really laborious and uninteresting to read.

The story itself was often hard to follow because there was far too much “telling” and not enough “showing”, while somehow also being devoid of the kind of descriptions that we'd need. For the most part, I didn't believe this was an MC club. It felt more like a cult that just happened to ride motorbikes. There was none of the usual MC-related activity or brotherhood shown that I would expect.

The little romance there was didn't make much of an impression, mostly due to the fact that it was almost insta-love and there was no basis for their feelings. On the other hand, there wasn't enough characterisation to really let us care so much about these characters as to hope that their romance would take off.

I find myself having more questions than answers after finishing the story. There's so much that has gone unexplained and I'm not sure if the author intends to write more or not, but I'm sorry to say that my curiosity isn't enough to make me want to read more. Perhaps if this had been fleshed out into a novel we would have had the opportunity to explore the characters, the MC background and history in a much more organic way. Sadly, this one didn't give itself a chance to do that. It tried to pack too much into too few pages.