📚📚📚📚📚⭐ = A book in a million
📚📚📚📚📚 = I could not put this book down. I Highly Recommend it.
📚📚📚📚 = A really great read.
📚📚📚 = It was enjoyable.
📚📚 = It was okay.
📚 = Um...! 😕
My Review
The Scald Crow
📚📚📚📚📚
I didn’t expect The Scald Crow to feel as complex as it does. This complexity is evident not only in its plot but also in its characters—how their lives intersect, conflict, and resist settling into anything neat or predictable. The narrative feels less like a straightforward story and more like a collection of lives encountering something they don’t completely understand, with each character reacting in their own unique way.
Calla arrives in Ireland with more than just a suitcase. Her decision to leave everything behind after losing her job seems practical on the surface, but as the story unfolds, it becomes clear that she has never really had a place to call home. Her visions read as if she has psychosis; she is never truly grounded in the present and always pulled elsewhere. Yet, there are moments when she knows things she shouldn’t—particularly about death. That certainty lends her experiences a weight that’s hard to dismiss, blurring the line between something psychological and something more tangible, and more frightening.
Colm, in contrast, is someone who belongs too much. His ties to home, to family, and to what’s been left unresolved keep pulling him back, even when he’d rather stay away. His brother’s disappearance hangs over everything, not as a dramatic mystery, but as something quieter and more persistent. It’s not just about what happened to Ciarán, but about what his absence has done to the people around him.
Saoirse adds another layer to this, and I found her perspective unexpectedly affecting. She isn’t caught up in the same immediacy as Calla and Colm, but her story carries a different kind of weight. There’s a stillness to her, shaped by a love she hasn’t been able to move on from. While others are trying to make sense of what’s happening now, she feels anchored to what’s already gone, and that contrast gives the story a different emotional texture.
The relationship between Calla and Colm sits somewhere in the middle of all this. It doesn’t feel like the centre of the story in a traditional way, but more like one thread among several that keep tightening and crossing over each other. Their connection is intense, but also inconsistent—sometimes close, sometimes uncertain, never quite settled. It doesn’t follow a clear rhythm, which makes it feel more real, but also harder to predict.
What I found most striking about the book is its deliberate pacing; it doesn’t rush to unravel its mysteries. Instead, it creates a spacious environment for uncertainty to thrive, allowing various elements of the narrative to develop at their own natural rhythm. Some questions are thoughtfully addressed, while others linger without resolution, crafting a sense of unease that permeates the reading experience.
As I reached the final pages, it wasn’t a singular moment that resonated with me, but rather the intricate way in which all the narrative threads—Calla, Colm, Saoirse, and Ciarán—intertwined without ever fully coming to rest. It feels as though the story exists in a state of perpetual motion, where each character carries unresolved burdens, and the significance of what unfolds next holds equal weight to the past events that have shaped their lives.
It’s not a book that ties everything up neatly, but that’s part of what makes it work. It leaves you sitting with it, thinking about the characters long after you’ve closed it, and wondering how their stories will continue.
Hanna Park
`I began my writing career in the pre-dawn of a winter morning while my husband snored like a train. We could call my husband the catalyst. If it weren’t for him, I would never have gone to the kitchen to make a pot of coffee, feed the cat, and sit on the loveseat in front of the fire. It was there, in those moments of wondrous quiet, that I did something I had never thought possible. I opened my laptop, and while the coffee went cold, I wrote a story. My husband had no idea that these sojourns to the loveseat in front of the fire would become a daily occurrence, that writing would become an obsession, but the cat knew. She knows everything.
I write stories that make you laugh, make you cry, and make you love. Thank you, friends, for reading!
In the beginning, there was an empty page.
I am a writer who lives in Muskoka, Canada, with a husband who snores, a hungry cat, and an almost perfect canine––he’s an adorable little shit.
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