Texas Gothic is murder mystery that involves ghosts, a paranormal family, anthropology, cowboys, and some tree climbing goats. Amy & Phin Goodnight are sisters that are staying at their aunt’s ranch to look over the animals and plant life while she’s away on vacation.
The small town is already well aware of the kooky Goodnight family and their paranormal tendencies, whether they believe it or not, the rumors are there. Then bodies start turning up, people start getting hurt, a ghost is haunting Amy and seems to be the cause of torment for others in the town as well. There’s even some romance thrown in.
While the romance started off pretty quickly, it was very expected and never surprising. The opening of the story features the goats being in the tree…again. Every scene with the goats was a scene stealer in the book, but there just weren’t enough of them. It was the kookiest part of the book to me, one that was not tapped for all it’s worth. The more important characters were so varied, it was wonderful, and they were fully fleshed out people with backgrounds and personality traits like no other.
Some of the smaller characters seemed to run together and there could have been fewer of them with the same effect. The book was around 400 pages long, but I felt that 100 pages of that could have been cut out as there were times when I was just waiting for something relevant to happen or to be said. The transitions took too long to hold my interest. The mystery within the story was great and interesting and entertaining at all aspects. I love the small town setting and the quirkiness of the families.
One of the romances felt real and true and it was really cute to read. The main one, however, felt forced and it was way too obvious that this is where the story was supposed to go – but the feelings never felt real to me.
- This reviewer also blogs at http://booksake.blogspot.com
- Publisher: Delacorte Books for Young Readers
- Date of Publication: July 12, 2011
