Steve Himmer

I don't know how to rate this. I had an incredibly difficult time getting through this although it's, like, only 200 pages. The plot and concept of the story were intriguing: Martin oversees the construction project of a couple of houses at the edge of a forest. In those woods, shapeshifters live. One in particular: SCRATCH. The people in town talk about him like one would recount the legend of the Boogeyman or Krampus. Or Bloody Mary. He is feared even though half of the people only grudgingly believe he exists and others just think it's hearsay and ignore it as good as they can. SO THAT SOUNDED AWESOME.

FIVE THINGS ABOUT "SCRATCH"

1.) It's slow. SO VERY SLOOOOWW. It dragged like honey, pages kept sticking together like glue. I can't seem to get through it. It takes AGES.
2.) Sometimes. Often. Many times. Occasionally it felt like I was reading a script.
3.) SCRATCH and Martins chapters/points of views mash quite often. They would intertwine and you would only know when they went their seperate ways again. It was confusing AS HELL.
4.) It has moments of glory. Moments where the words meant more to me than they had before. Those rare sentences that really resonated with me. Quotes that made me understand why some people really adored the short stories of the same author. That made me see some talent.

"Dreams are true stories told in the only moments you're willing to listen."

"Everything is devoured as soon as it's born."

"(...) all those borrowed shapes and borrowed stories (...)"

"ANOTHER LIFE TO OVERWRITE YOURS, TO FILL THE SPACE YOU'VE MADE FOR YOURSELF"

5.) Those kind of moments made it even harder to keep going when that rush of GLORY went away. SIGH.

This was hard. And put me in a reading slump. I had no desire left to keep going. Thanks to Scratch and Wie wir lieben: Vom Ende der Monogamie. This month has been hard for my book shelf and my heart. I need good books now to get other this.

Mein Buch sieht so aus übrigens: