Official Review: The Paranormal Gazette

[Sarah1]

[Following is the official OnlineBookClub.org review of "The Paranormal Gazette" by Anthony Bartholomew.]

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"The Paranormal Gazette," by A. P. Bartholomew, is the first in an intended trilogy. It is a mediocre story (at best) about a man who inherits his grandfather's home and newspaper business in Britain. Simon Baker is a single father of six-year-old, Gemma, and he is vaguely employed as a free-lance sports writer. Though he has no previous experience in the paranormal, he takes over his deceased grandfather's business, the Paranormal Gazette. With a miscellaneous group of people, he begins investigating paranormal experiences.

As the group delve into their investigation, the task turns out to be more difficult than anyone had anticipated. They encounter several problems throughout the book and obtain aid and/or interference from various spirits. Ultimately, they end up with a much bigger story for the paper than they had imagined.

The author's concept for the book was intriguing; had the story construction been more developed, it could have been a good tale. The underlying theme was weak, making it an ordinary story. The participants in the paranormal search were not credible characters; they included (on a seeming whim) the unbelievably mature, six-year-old daughter, the babysitter, the babysitter's new boyfriend, and a variety of people not associated with the paranormal. This unusual group recklessly bulldoze their way through their investigations with no regard to personal or partner safety even after that safety is precariously challenged. The characters become even more unbelievable by showing a complete lack of appropriate emotion in perilous situations. The unlikely participants and under-developed personalities made it impossible to be engrossed by the story being told.

Besides the less-than-credible characters and weak theme, there were a multitude of grammatical and spelling errors. The frequent errors were a continual distraction, again, making it difficult to become engrossed in the story. The use of extremely short chapters (many were only one to four paragraphs), also created continual and irksome breaks in the flow of the story.

I thought the concept of the story had excellent potential, but I believe the author should have taken more time building a perusable tale and credible characters, as well as given attention to sentence structure, grammar, and spelling. Considering the writing format and content, it would appear the author's intended audience was pre-teen or young adult; however, with more developed writing, the story could have appealed to a larger audience. I would give "The Paranormal Gazette" 1 out of 4 stars.

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