When I discovered my copy of The Eaton at a Barnes and Noble in Lansing, Michigan, my mind was drawn to sharp contrast of the soft, soothing feel of the cover, with the eeriness of the abandoned train depot in its photo. Intrigued, I flipped the book over and immediately, my mind screamed Yes! as I read the description on the back. An abandoned hotel from the early 1900s that had been built in secret beneath an equally abandoned building? How fast can I pay? I left the store with my stack of treasures, fully prepared to devour this book.

I did not.

This book seemed to be just the type of mystery I had been waiting to read. What I wound up with instead was an intense disappointment after spending 415 pages worth of my time on this book’s disjointed plot. The book’s main character, Sam Spicer, saves up his limited funds to buy the abandoned Michigan Central Rail Depot in Eaton Rapids, Michigan, with the goal of turning the rundown place into a “hip” martini bar in a locale that doesn’t match his aspirations. The book’s main plot spans only hours on the day of Sam’s purchase. The book’s subplot, which is the backstory surrounding the hotel’s creation, takes place a hundred years before. When the characters discover the abandoned hotel and begin to explore its rooms, discovering various trinkets along the way left behind by its mysterious former inhabitants, I began to get excited. I wanted to delve into the pages of this book to explore an underground, historic hotel reminiscent of The Hollywood Tower Hotel from Disney’s The Tower of Terror. What I got instead was pulled out of the plot every other chapter from the near-constant flashbacks whose purpose seemed more to reach the required word count than to further the actual plot.

Aside from the incessant flashbacks, one of the things that bothered me most about this book was that the characters themselves seemed too stereotypical, and lacked any true individuality. The author has difficulty writing from the female perspective, and clearly doesn’t seem to understand the minds, emotions, and general makeup of women. Additionally, every character seemed to share a voice, right down to Sam’s foul-mouthed thirteen- and fourteen-year-old cousins. And don’t get me started on Sam.

Sam is a pansy. He got on my nerves to no end.

From the beginning, we find out a little more than is necessary about him. We find out that he is deathly afraid of mice, due to a “traumatic experience” he had as a child with his foul-mouthed cousins. We discovered that he has cheated on his longtime love, the girl he considers to be the “love of his life” and who he plans to propose to, and justifies his actions to a ridiculous degree. He often makes the wrong decision, followed by a worse one, and all but squeezes his eyes shut humming to himself until the moment of responsibility passes. He’s happy letting his “just one of the guys” girlfriend stand up and take the lead, and by the book’s conclusion, I nearly threw it across the room in my frustration at having spent so much valuable time with this character. If he were a real person, I couldn’t stand five minutes in a room alone with him.

I could continue on with my complaints with this book, but then we’d end up with another novel, now wouldn’t we? All in all, the cover of this book made my hopes for a good old-fashioned horror story soar, and the experience of reading the words on the pages sent them splattering across the concrete, just like the brains of each and every mind-numbingly stupid character.