Becki reviewed on
There were some interesting twists to this book, but ultimately I really didn't like this book enough to recommend it to anyone.
Admittedly I didn't care much for the author's writing style, or the self-absorbed unhappy characters, but ultimately, my dislike of the book boiled down to two things for me:
1) I could not believe the characters (until significantly investing myself in the book). I'm pretty sure anyone who sticks with the book long enough will get hooked, but Nick was just too flat a character for me to believe him in the first part. It will be interesting to see how film changes Nick - I find it hard to believe he can be as flat-lined on screen as he is portrayed in the first part of the book and be believable. By the time I moved into the third part I understood why the author created Nick as such a flat character in the first part, but I couldn't shake my disappointment at the overdone-ness of his flatness. The author did flesh him out later in the book, but it was too late for me to have a change of heart.
2) What is less forgivable (in a creative-writing sense) is the way the author overdid the "leads" early on. Her strategy seemed to be "leave so many clues that the reader is completely confuddled and I can twist this in many different directions later when I finally figure out where I want to take it".
It also irritated me that Nick (and I think Amy too) sometimes stepped out of the page and spoke directly to the reader. They were short moments (that a reader might miss), but it was jarring to me, in a way that distracted from the narrative. If it was an intentional technique, it failed on me.
While there's certainly room to dislike this book solely because of the unlikable characters, vulgar language, and the topic and genre aren't going to fit everyone's tastes, and I'll readily admit I didn't enjoy having the story and unhappy characters "in my head" after a while, I would have loved to have been blown away by unexpected twists and an incredible ending. There were some surprising twists, but nothing terribly thrilling, or even all that disturbing when all was said and done.
It could have ended twenty pages earlier than it did with a much better ending than it had. While it wouldn't have been an original way to end, I kept thinking while reading the last twenty pages or so..."it could stop at any point here and make a great Rod Serling-type or even Hitchcock-esque story". I would have rather felt unsatisfied with a story that was unfinished, but trusted me to "get it", or just allowed me to interpret it however I would, than to be underwhelmed by banal overstatement.
IMO, this was a story with great potential, but the author disappointed me.
Admittedly I didn't care much for the author's writing style, or the self-absorbed unhappy characters, but ultimately, my dislike of the book boiled down to two things for me:
1) I could not believe the characters (until significantly investing myself in the book). I'm pretty sure anyone who sticks with the book long enough will get hooked, but Nick was just too flat a character for me to believe him in the first part. It will be interesting to see how film changes Nick - I find it hard to believe he can be as flat-lined on screen as he is portrayed in the first part of the book and be believable. By the time I moved into the third part I understood why the author created Nick as such a flat character in the first part, but I couldn't shake my disappointment at the overdone-ness of his flatness. The author did flesh him out later in the book, but it was too late for me to have a change of heart.
2) What is less forgivable (in a creative-writing sense) is the way the author overdid the "leads" early on. Her strategy seemed to be "leave so many clues that the reader is completely confuddled and I can twist this in many different directions later when I finally figure out where I want to take it".
It also irritated me that Nick (and I think Amy too) sometimes stepped out of the page and spoke directly to the reader. They were short moments (that a reader might miss), but it was jarring to me, in a way that distracted from the narrative. If it was an intentional technique, it failed on me.
While there's certainly room to dislike this book solely because of the unlikable characters, vulgar language, and the topic and genre aren't going to fit everyone's tastes, and I'll readily admit I didn't enjoy having the story and unhappy characters "in my head" after a while, I would have loved to have been blown away by unexpected twists and an incredible ending. There were some surprising twists, but nothing terribly thrilling, or even all that disturbing when all was said and done.
It could have ended twenty pages earlier than it did with a much better ending than it had. While it wouldn't have been an original way to end, I kept thinking while reading the last twenty pages or so..."it could stop at any point here and make a great Rod Serling-type or even Hitchcock-esque story". I would have rather felt unsatisfied with a story that was unfinished, but trusted me to "get it", or just allowed me to interpret it however I would, than to be underwhelmed by banal overstatement.
IMO, this was a story with great potential, but the author disappointed me.
