Platform Seven

It took me two attempts, almost a year apart to get all the way through this audiobook.

The premise is great - an amnesiac spirit confined to haunt Peterborough Railway station (a place I have only recently visited) who is able to read the inner lives and thoughts of those she encounters on the station whilst knowing little of her own past.

The description of the rhythms of station life and the workers and travellers who pass through was really well done and interesting. However, once her memory starts to return and she is free to wander the wider city (also familiar to me) we enter an extended flashback into her relationship with an abusive boyfriend, and this is the point at which I originally gave up. Although well written it was much less interesting (and much more creepy and unpleasant) than what had come before, especially since we the reader were pretty sure what the end result would be.

I did want to get further on my second attempt and resisted the temptation to skip some chapters and eventually we did emerge from the flashback and to the spirit world.

Kudos to the author for not giving us the easy payoff that we really wanted but everything does get wrapped nicely with a satisfying conclusion, just not the one that we really wanted.

A haunting book in more than one sense of the word!