Review: I so wanted to hate this book
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 07 16, 2012
This book should have been everything I hate about books. The main character is some teenage girl. It's bargain priced. It's self published and it's marketed as alternative young adult fiction. The book also has sequels coming funded by a Kickstarter campaign so it has that indie freemium vibe to it that makes my stomach turn a little bit from that "I'm trying super hard to prove I don't work for the man" vibe.I actually adored it. Loved it, couldn't put it down. I thought the characters were compelling. The prose was tight and well formed. The story was engaging. The plot was paced well and the ending was complete and satisfying. It's everything I want in a book. I've been denied at least one of the above in "bestsellers" for many multiples of this price point.It's short. Don't expect to spend a week in this world until the sequels are released. It's got some tough language so you don't want to buy it if your preferred genre is Christian romance.I would not recommend it to my kids. I don't censor what they read but I still believe childhood and young adulthood should be as full of puppies, unicorns and wizards for as long as they want to keep reading about them. Yes I know you can make all kinds of allegories about the Wizard of Oz but that can wait until you're an embittered twice divorced English professor. If you don't think your kid is ready to spend a lot of time parsing the desirability of castrating rapists with shotguns, you might not want to buy this for Hanukkah. I would however highly recommend this for an afternoon's enjoyment by an adult or near adult.