”Something’s coming.”

The thing that was coming was a DNF @ 65%. 🤐

Spoiled Milk is another book for which I loved the premise but was disappointed by the execution. The average rating for this is rather favorable so I am certainly an outlier here!

The first few chapters were delightfully dreary and had me hooked. I thought the author set the stage beautifully to continue cultivating a gothic, vintage atmosphere. I truly was eager to delve deeper into the story! But as I progressed through the pages I found my interest dwindling. The primary downfall of the book for me was the pacing.

My biggest gripe: if you’ve read the synopsis for the book, you’ll know right away that a girl named Violet is murdered and the surviving girls at her boarding school turn to spiritualism to try to avenge her, and as it happens ”Violet's spirit appears, choosing pious Evelyn as her unlikely medium.” Okay fantastic, consider me enrolled! But this doesn’t happen until the end of chapter 10, around 40% in to the book. This should have either been kept out of the synopsis so Evelyn’s possession could have been an exciting reveal or this should have happened within the first handful of chapters. (I have a forum post about this as well.)

I felt there were other weaknesses in the pacing which go hand-in-hand with the author’s tendency to tell instead of show. With Violet’s death at the beginning of the book, it was difficult to feel any emotional connection between her and the other girls, including the narrator. If you kill an important character immediately, you need to make a concerted effort to get the reader to invest in their importance. I would have almost rather spent time with Violet and grown to love her, been shocked by her death a third or halfway through after seeing some other ominous occurrences (such as the rotten food), then been shocked again by her spirit choosing Evelyn as a medium. Slowness is not inherently a weakness in a novel, but here I felt it was.

All that being said, I think Avery Curran is a promising author. Based on her bio it makes sense why she wrote this novel. I find her ideas and knowledge intriguing, and I would give her next work a chance. There were some passages I rather liked and I enjoyed Emily’s narrative voice. Unfortunately, Spoiled Milk ended up being too much of a sour experience for me.

Special shout out to @Not_a_Wraith for buddy reading this with me!!! I’m so sorry I bailed!