Book Stats
- Publication Date: 02/10/25
- Format: ebook
- Pages: 290
- Chapters: 31
- Narrator POV: 3rd person POV
- On Kindle Unlimited 🖤
Book Rating
Overall: ⭐⭐⭐ / 5
Spice: 🌶️/ 5
Summary & Review
The Lost Coast, by Daniel Robinson, starts off strong with a violent massacre. Immediately, we’re transported into a story where white settlers decide they need to kill 250 Wiyot tribe members, sparing no one, not even women or children. It was brutal and an unfortunate portrayal of past travesties in our own history.
One of the Wiyot members, a shaman named Kinetitah (though the settlers referred to him as Mad River Billy), showed up at the end of the massacre and cursed the men who took part. He vowed that he would reappear every ten years to seek revenge by killing a member of each of their families, until 100 years has passed and then he would end the rest of their legacies by killing any remaining descendants.
The story continues to follow that curse and the family members who are altered by it every decade.
I thought the story was intriguing. I was immediately pulled in and was interested to see where things would go. There were minimal errors found and the writing was well done overall. However, I ultimately rated this 3 out of 5 stars. For me as a reader, I love getting to know the characters, seeing their traumas and growth, and developing the opportunity to either root for them to succeed or fail. Unfortunately, I did not get that from this book. There were so many characters thrown in and killed off that I never really cared about any of them. Half the time I couldn’t even remember if they were a new character or someone who had been mentioned before. That caused me to feel a bit of disconnect toward the story and without someone or something to root for, I sometimes felt a little bored or kind of “meh” about the story as a whole.
Additionally, I felt like some things were extremely repetitive and that can make it less enjoyable for me as a reader. For example (without spoiling), there are 2 Indian women who are mentioned before every killing and each time, we read essentially the same thing. I would’ve preferred it if the author would’ve either left it out, changed up the way it was described, or left it open ended, such as “2 females showed up next to a fire”, then the chapter ended. But, like better worded because I’m not an author. Basically, it would just allow us readers to assume what happened because we’ve already read it several times.
Another extremely repetitive point was the creature. I felt like I read how tall it was and how loud it roared, shaking the land, so many times that it lost its chilling effect. I’d rather have other features described each time the creature is seen, just to give us readers more of a full picture to build in our minds. But after having finished the book, I really only remember that the creature was tall and loud.
The final reason I rated it 3 stars is simply because I felt like the ending was unfinished and/or unexplained. The entire purpose of the curse was to take vengeance against the men who slaughtered the Wiyot tribe, by killing them as well as their entire families and descendants. However, we learn Ida had a descendant’s child and Susan stated was a descendant, but both were allowed to survive. I guess I’m just confused as to why the curse was “fulfilled” when it didn’t feel like it was actually completed. I don’t believe these to be spoilers because they didn’t really impact the story or plot in any way.
Overall, though, this was a solid story with good writing. The story maintained my interest the majority of the time (aside from the repetitive parts) and I would recommend this to anyone who loves a good horror/suspense story.
According to Amazon, where I borrowed this book via Kindle Unlimited, this story is geared for children 10-18 years old. I don’t feel that’s accurate, based on the numerous on-screen and mentioned deaths, murders, and bloody/gory scenes. But it’s not overly scary, so I suppose that audience would depend on the child themselves and how much they like scarier topics.
I rated this as 1 chili pepper because there was a kiss in the story. But there weren’t any spicy scenes. There were vague mentions of intimate situations that occurred on a few occasions, but nothing really descriptive.
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