TBR Pile Book #6 – The Pure Heart

Medium – Book

About the Book – Iseabail is a young woman living on a Scottish island, on the edge of the Outer Hebrides. She is the only person on the island who can read and write and is engaged to be married to the son of the chieftain. One day, a letter and a messenger arrive on the island with a curious demand. A wealthy merchant is looking for a young girl from the island to act as companion to his daughter for one year. Reluctantly, Iseabail agrees to go to the house of the merchant, but her seven-year-old charge is very unsettling, and Iseabail soon realises that not everything in the house is as it should be.

My thoughts – This book was a freebie (or bonus book) from a subscription book box that I get on a monthly basis. The books in the box are all YA fiction, which is a genre that I really enjoy, and the box is a complete treat for me – next time I get one, I’ll blog about it on here! I found this book a bit of a let down, though, as opposed to the usually excellent books I get from the boxes. I enjoyed the settings of first the Scottish island and then the borderlands, although I did think the author could have included more of the heritage and land features of Scotland. The book was quite dark and chilling, although I found the structure of the story a bit odd – it started very slowly and then increased in momentum, with a massive information ‘dump’ in the last 50 or so pages. There is (SPOILERS) a massive plot twist at the end, which leaves open the chance for a sequel, but which also leaves the ending massively frustrating.

The main character is a bit of a wet slap really. She’s super into science, reason and logic, and puts herself into real danger in the name of ‘curiosity’. Her downfall at the end of the book is mostly due to her unimaginativeness and inability to understand that she might be in trouble and needs to leave the house. The fact that the danger can be seen by the reader and not by the main character just means that it is really annoying. The other characters are distinctly unlikeable pretty much throughout the book – the tempestuous Eidlith (Iseabail’s sister), her protective and grumpy mother, the spoilt Maria and the weird and creepy merchant. The only characters I really have time for are Artair, Iseabail’s fiancee, who appears for all of ten pages but seems a fairly clever and decent man, and William, who doesn’t speak but seems fairly switched on (there is zero character growth for either of them!)

Originally, I was going to give this book 1 star, but I was impressed by the twist at the end enough to give it an extra star – even if it did really irritate me!