I’ve always had a soft spot for all things Irish, and magical realism in fiction is also a favorite. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find that same admiration while reading THE STORY COLLECTOR. I feel like the magic was missing, and the story was slow and sluggish.

In the modern day, Sarah leaves her husband on Christmas. Readers are fed hints of “The Bad Thing” that happened, marking the start of the marriage’s decline and the impetus for Sarah’s drinking. But, at the 55% mark, where I stopped reading, we still have few details. Instead, the author immerses readers in the diary of a young woman from the same Irish village that Sarah is visiting, written one hundred years earlier.

While I do have some issues with the diary itself—which reads like the rest of the narration of the book with only a different narrator to differentiate—it was the most vivid of the worlds built in THE STORY COLLECTOR. I found the fairy stories fascinating, but not enough to entice me to keep reading.

Perhaps the dual stories were too much for this one book, or the pacing needs work to hold the reader’s interest and anticipation. Though this book wasn’t for me, you know what I always say: not every book is for every reader, and that’s okay! I’d like to thank the publisher and Netgalley for making the ARC available to readers willing to share their honest thoughts and opinions.