This short novella is placed before all the events that happen in Shutter. I do have to say that I love the names. Trigger. Shutter. And it all fits the story so well.

I have tried Shutter, and when I couldn’t get through that one, I saw this one and tried it out. I normally love stories like this, and I am always interesting in Helsings and monsters and special abilities.

I still want to further read Shutter, someday, but I had the same problem with that one as I had with this one. Our main character Micheline, she is not only not that likeable, she is also an enormous idiot, risking people’s lives, risking her life. It is quite frustrating that someone tasked with such an important task does all these things. I know, she wants to show her dad that she is capable of leading the corpse one day, but there also must be another way to show him that.

The book was quite exciting, with a running wild scissorclaw killing/maiming people. I really loved those parts, well, all but the last part, because that was just overkill and as one might say: “That escalated quickly.” What happened there in the last part quite ruined the book for me. It was just over the top, weird, and I don’t understand how Micheline apparently never got punishment or something? Or maybe she did, but after all that went down we are thrown in a time warp and end up a few months/weeks later. sighs I was kind of looking forward to the ending, I had quite a few questions after what happened there.

I didn’t like the dad or the mom. The dad kept pushing his daughter, threatening her with losing her chance at leading the corpse, didn’t hide his disappointment when she made a mistake.
The mom was also meh, I won’t spoil that one, as that happens somewhat later in the book, but I was just shaking my head at what she said to Micheline.
I can somehow see why Micheline has turned out the way she did. With 2 parents and sky-high expectations of doom.

Would I recommend this book? At times yes, the chases, the hunt and the information about Helsing and what they do, is very interesting. But the idiocy, the expectations of the parents were just meh.