“Ferryman” by Claire McFall

 I was gifted this book by Walker Books US through Bookstagrammers.com in exchange for a honest review.

Dylan has escaped a horrific train crash unscathed. Except she hasn't.

The bleak landscape around her isn't Scotland. It's a wasteland haunted by wraiths searching for human souls. 

And the stranger waiting for her isn't an ordinary boy. Tristan is a Ferryman, tasked with transporting her soul safely to the afterlife, a journey he's made a thousand times before. 

Except this time, something's different.

Torn between love and destiny, Dylan realizes she can't let Tristan go, nor can she stay with him. Eventually, inevitably, the wraiths would capture her soul and she would be lost forever. 

Can true love overcome the boundaries of death?*

As gorgeous as this cover is, the story inside is less so. The concept of a ferryman to bring people across to the afterlife is very interesting but the execution of the story fell flat for me.

Dylan is an uninteresting main character who’s core traits are “not being like anyone else” and whining about going uphill. She falls in love a little too quickly with Tristan (her ferryman through the afterlife) and all of her decisions are centered around him and whether or not he loves her back. 

Tristan could have been an interesting character. I didn’t mind reading about his back story but he reads like a 2014 mysterious bad boy so by the end, I didn’t really care what happened to him. He is also in love with Dylan but can’t be with her because of vague reasons. He constantly reminds the reader that she is unlike anyone he has ever met even though Dylan herself is very generic.

There is hardly any plot other than this whirlwind insta-love romance and so the stakes are very low, resulting in my disinterest. If they had hated each other at the start but needed the other to get across the wasteland, it would have been WAY more interesting. Even if the story was shorter and ended tragically, I would have enjoyed it more. But instead, the main thrust of the story is a very fake feeling romance between two characters I didn't care about.

The best part of the book was the world building. The idea that after you die, you need a ferryman to get your soul across is very interesting and the author did a good job creating her world and keeping it fairly consistent. I liked the Scottish wasteland setting and the vibe of the demons creatures that hunt the characters through the book. Many of the rules in the afterlife however just felt like a cop-out to avoid enhancing the plot.

Another problem I had with the book was the prose. In every scene, there was a lot of head-hopping between characters with no good reason or a scene/chapter break. It constantly brought me out of the story so I could never fully dive in. I know I read an ARC (advanced readers copy) but there were multiple errors printed and the prose itself was pretty bad. There are hardly any descriptions past what the characters can see. The other 4 senses don't exist in the prose and the reader isn't allowed to draw conclusions about characters’ actions or thoughts. 

“Ferryman” was a wild success in China, it’s an international bestseller, and it’s being made into a movie. There are readers out there who love this book so if you think you might enjoy this paranormal and romantic retelling of the Charon myth, go check it out. However for all the reasons listed above, I was not a fan.

Although I skimmed the last 100 pages and read the ending, I ended up DNFing “Ferryman” at 67%. Life is too short to read books you don’t love. If I had finished, it would have most likely been a 2 star read.

“Ferryman” released October 12th in the USA!

Thanks to Walker Books US and Bookstagrammers.com for providing this book in exchange for a review!

Until next time!

~ K.J. Haakenson

*synopsis from Goodreads