Book Review: The Haunting of H. G. Wells by Robert Masello

The Haunting of H. G. Wells

Author: Robert Masello

Genre: Historical Retellings

Year: 2020

My Rating: ★★ 

Goodreads - Amazon

Official Summary: It’s 1914. The Great War grips the world—and from the Western Front a strange story emerges…a story of St. George and a brigade of angels descending from heaven to fight beside the beleaguered British troops. But can there be any truth to it?

H. G. Wells, the most celebrated writer of his day—author of The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds, The Invisible Man—is dispatched to find out. There, he finds an eerie wasteland inhabited by the living, the dead, and those forever stranded somewhere in between…a no-man’s-land whose unhappy souls trail him home to London, where a deadly plot, one that could turn the tide of war, is rapidly unfolding.

In league with his young love, the reporter and suffragette Rebecca West, Wells must do battle with diabolical forces—secret agents and depraved occultists—to save his sanity, his country, and ultimately the world.

I'll be honest, I didn't want to spend time writing a summary for this book. 

Let's start with the good things about The Haunting of H. G. Wells, shall we? It's an easy read. I like easy reads. Don't get me wrong, I adore classic literature, but sometimes you just need something you can breeze through without having to stop and wonder what that word means. I found no fault in the writing style, whatsoever. 

I enjoyed H. G.'s wife, Jane, and her adventures. She seems a lovely, quiet sort of person, although I doubt she was that way in her youth. I can relate to her a little bit in how she likes to keep such a tidy, warm, comfortable home. She's charming.

Now for the not-so-good.

The premise itself in terms of pure storytelling comes and goes. It hits strong strides and then falters for about 50 pages at a time where I felt myself slogging through the book. It had nothing to do with the writing, just that the story developed a hiccup.

On the whole, there was far, far too much going on. The story should have been limited to one viewpoint, or two at the very most. But we spent time with H. G., time with his wife, and time with Rebecca. That's far too much of an attention split to make anything work in this type of story.

Which leads me to Rebecca. I hate her. She's a nasty, conniving "feminist" who gives women a bad name. I despise her even more because I know she was a real person. I can't mention Rebecca without mentioning her relationship with H. G. which is the main reason why I ultimately disliked this book. I have an issue when adultery without consequences is mentioned in entertainment. Wells had no consequences for his years and years of "passades," which we should simply label as cheating on his wife. Of course, he also cheated on his first wife with his current wife, so there's that exciting bit of news. He admits to his sexual dalliances as being a part of his muse and without them, his writing would shrivel up and die. In reality, he was a dirty old man. Rebecca was simply the latest in a long line of women in Wells' life, and he, frankly, disgusted me. As did the two sex scenes between them that I didn't need to experience which is why I skim read those parts.

There's also the insane sexual exploits of an occultist coven that's involved in the plot against London. While present in the story, the scenes with this group of characters are thankfully brief. 

The ending of the book is weak. I don't know what I was expecting, but it wasn't what the author gave me. It starts so strong, but then I forget that the first chapter is simply a revised version of a story printed in the newspaper at the time. So it really wasn't Masello's writing at all. The book started out clever and quickly devolved into being not quite so clever after all. There are ghosts, but not to the same degree that one would have expected. I was hoping for something rich and gothic in nature, but nope, that's not what the author delivered.

Overall, it had the potential to be an entertaining read, and it was about half of the time, but the rest of the time, I spent gagging and wishing I didn't feel obligated to finish it after having gone so far. The immorality of the lead characters, their lifestyle choices that are so different from my own faith-based life, just made me sad. I've never read any of Wells' books, but I now have an unfavorable view of him as a person so will probably avoid perusing his stories going forward. I felt that I should review The Haunting of H. G. Wells simply because so many people have given it positive reviews, but not everyone should feel obligated to love this book. I'll certainly think twice before accepting one of the Amazon First Reads offers from Prime again. At least I didn't spend money on it. And now to delete it from my collection.