The Surf Dracula corollary began as a tweet regarding television. User @TopherFlorence…
back in the day if u did a tv show called surf dracula you’d see that fool surfing every week in new adventures but in the streaming era the entire 1st season gotta be a long ass flashback to how he got the surfboard until you finally get to see him surf for 5 min in the finale
Topher’s tweet is accurate. Too many shows nowadays are invested in origins and withholding. It makes it so it’s impossible to enjoy serialized television. This is why shows like CSI remain popular.
Surf Dracula can also be applied to a book like this. You know there’s something weird going on in this book. The writer keeps leading you to the precipice over and over again. Over and over. We’ll get there some day…
And when we do? Meh.
It’s a testament to the quality of Kiersten White’s quality prose that I remained with the story. I liked the way she wrote the characters and her descriptions of the house are vivid enough to appreciate. There’s a lot to like here.
But if you’re going to make a story about (spoilers) and want it to be (spoilers), point A needs to be revealed — or at least more strongly hinted at — before we get to point B.
And it sucks because this feels like a wasted opportunity by a talented writer to tell an interesting and personal tale. It’s not bad but it should have been better. Let Surf Dracula surf.