When I heard that there was a retelling of Wuthering Heights with robots out there, I knew I had to have it. Wuthering Heights is one of my favourite books of all time. I was eager to get my hands on Barren Cove. I wondered how Ariel S Winter would do things differently. Would the landscape be as important as the characters? Would those characters be as ghastly? Would there be a romance that is both revolting and engaging? I couldn't wait to find out. Not long after starting this book I realised that I was going to be disapointed. Barren Cove is not what I thought it was going to be. I found it boring and mediocre.

The writing itself isn't terrible. Ariel S Winter is not a bad writer at all, but the story itself and the way it was presented bored me. The idea at the centre of this novel was intriguing. Winter's has a solid imagination, I'll give him that, but the delivery was flat.

The storyline was dull and at times confusing. The chapters jumped time periods with no explanation. A few pages into a chapter you would realise you were back in time. There were scenes of violence that I assume were meant to shock but left me feeling cold. I got the overwhelming sense that this book was supposed to be 'cool' but I found it nothing but dull.

The character suffered from the same problems. They were bland and unrelatable. I saw no growth in them, and the female characters were woefully underwritten. All the characters were fairly unlikable but in the wrong way. In Wuthering Heights the characters are monsters, they are deplorable in every way yet somehow they remain interesting and engaging. Barren Cove comes nowhere near this. I felt like the characters were supposed to be 'edgy,' but again they were just monotonous.

There was no substant to Barren Cove, no real depth. Sadly, it left me feeling cold.