BOOK REVIEW | Episode 8: Platform 7- Spaghetti, A Doctor, and Hauntings?

Intro okay either this shirt is gonna wash me out or it's gonna look okay guess we'll see what the end product [Music] hi everyone and welcome back to big city B I'm B for those of you who are just joined in for the first time if you like this video go ahead and give it a thumbs up and make sure you subscribe today I'm gonna be reviewing platform 7 by Luis Dodi some of the basics for this book the genre is going to be horror but a psychological horror and a little bit of thriller mystery although I think that horror is the better genre for there are some trigger warnings for this book so make sure you check out the description below to see what those are okay on to your summary platform 7:00 at Summary 4:00 a.m. the Peterborough railway station is deserted the man crossing the covered walkway is confident he's alone but what he doesn't realize is that he has company Lisa Evans knows what he's about to do as she tries and fails to stop him from walking towards the edge of the platform two deaths on platform 7 and 18 months surely they're connected no one is more desperate to understand their connection than Lisa Evans herself after all she was the first of the two to die on to the characters we have Lisa Evans who is the ghost we see haunting the Peterborough railway station well that's a tongue twister say that three times fast then we have Maddy who is Lisa's boyfriend we have Dalmar who is the night security guard at the Peterborough railway station then we also have PC Lockhart who is a police officer at the police station across from the train station then we have the stationmaster who is either named Melissa or Melinda I have returned the book before I wrote down her name and I can't find it anywhere who is in charge of running the Peterborough railway station see now I'm just gonna try and say that as much as possible to see how tongue-tied I can get we have Thomas Lauren who jumps from the platform and is the second death in 18 months on platform 7 and then we have Caleb who is a handsome looking guy that Lisa's ghost becomes infatuated with and starts to follow when he enters the Peterborough railway station on to what I liked about this book the first thing that I liked about this book was the idea of what it means to be a ghost where can a ghost go how much does it go through member what is their physical form do they have any superpowers as a ghost I thought this was all very interesting and was really kind of what grabbed me in the first couple pages of the book the second thing that I liked about this book not necessarily liked but I thought was good was the depiction of Maddie and Lisa's relationship while it's not a good relationship I thought it was very authentic and realistic not gonna spoil it for you so you're gonna have to read the book to find out what their relationship is on two things I didn't like about this book the first thing let's just get this right out of the way throw in a spoiler slide Review there is no connection between Lisa and Thomas's death he jumps because he's a pedophile and she jumps because she was in well she doesn't really jump she like unknowingly got stuck on the tracks because she was running away from her abusive boyfriend so no there's no connection at all so I thought that was very misleading in the summary and I was looking throughout the whole book to try and figure out what their connection was and there's there's no connection the second thing that I did not like about this book was that I felt that the story was too convoluted with too many sidetrack characters we have Dalmar we have the stationmaster we have Caleb we have the mortuary assistant we have Lisa's best friend's sister it just was too complicated and their stories didn't add anything to Lisa and Maddie story so I feel like anything outside of Lisa and Maddie's story could be cut also I'm not sure what the point is for us to get invested in these characters that we don't see anything about later in life like we know almost nothing about Delmar throughout the majority of the book but then the last chapter so we learn a little bit about his relationship status and I just I saw I was reading it I was like why are we why do we need to know this it seems like Lewis had other story ideas or other book ideas and then just kind of crammed it all into this one and it didn't make any sense so I didn't like that the third thing that I didn't like I felt no emotional bonds to any of the characters I thought they were all pretty boring yeah I get it Maddie's not that great Lisa's got low self-esteem but that didn't make me like any of them I didn't really like any of the characters so that was disappointing because it made it very hard to stick through and read the whole book the fourth thing that I didn't like either the editing job I guess the editing job but I felt like there were spelling mistakes or grammatical mistakes I could be persuaded that they are UK English spelling and slang or UK English colloquialisms but they didn't seem intentional and they very random and they seemed like one offs so I don't know if that's a bad editing job but I just I didn't like that either the fifth thing that I didn't like the ending was tied up too neatly I felt okay great that's nice and I never want to feel that way at the end of the book I either want to have an emotional reaction or I want to be left with a thought that makes me sit and simmer for a while but I don't want to a feeling at the end of a book ever on two quotes from this book the first quote the JED don't bother haunting graveyards they're the last place on earth they need to haunt the living do that job for them with their messy combination of grief desire and imagination I like this because I always picture graveyards or cemeteries to be like teeming with spirits and ghosts of people who are there but after reading this quote I kind of agree like there are other places that they could be haunting that are much more interesting and living humans do have a greater capacity for feeling grief or imagination to haunt those places themselves so interesting I like that the second quote the water gets hot very gradually and as far as the Frog is concerned there is no one point where it gets dramatically different or bad enough to jump out so this boat comes in a little bit later into the book when we see Matty and lisas relationship and I think it's a good metaphor for an abusive relationship because the person who is being abused or the victim is the Frog and from the beginning of their relationship to when they see a point of it's getting bad or it's getting too hot the water is too hot they can't really pinpoint when they realized that the water got too hot or when they should jumped out but looking back they can see that yes the water was hot and there were these red flags around thankfully I haven't been in any of these kinds of relationships so I can't speak personally to that front but from what I've heard from friends or have read about from autobiographies that seems to be a reoccurring theme that they didn't realize until I moving right along and finishing this review would I recommend this book I think you already know no I wouldn't recommend this book I thought the summary was a lot more interesting than the actual book and I feel like this summary was misleading if the book was I don't I don't know if if the summary if the book would match the summary of the summary match the book I feel like my expectations would have been managed a little bit better but because there's just that jarring difference between the two I I didn't I didn't like it also as I said earlier there's too many background stories that didn't add to the book it just felt convoluted and that Louise was trying to combine a bunch of different stories into one story instead of focusing on her main story if you do insist on reading this book because there were people on Goodreads who just liked it basically for the complete opposite reasons that I liked it but if you do insist on reading this book please make sure that you check out the trigger warnings in the description below some of the negative reviews on Goodreads for this book mention that they wish there had been a trigger warning because so much of the book deals with triggering topics okay that's all I have for you today go ahead and comment down below what are some of your favorite psychological horror books I definitely want to get into reading more horror books I feel like I read a lot of mystery thrillers but I want to get into that horror genre a little bit more hit that like button if you liked this review and make sure you're subscribed okay everyone I hope you're all well all the best always bye [Music]