Review: Wow, this is bad
Rating: 1 out of 5
Date: 09 6, 2013
Oh my goodness. I should preface this by saying that I'm really not a jerk. But even though this book is (at the moment, anyway) only 99 cents, I feel like I ought to warn everyone else that that dollar could be better spent elsewhere. I mean, a Snickers bar is gone in about 30 seconds, but it's way more satisfying. This book is so, so bad. All I can figure is that all the good reviews are either from 13-year-olds who've never paid attention in English class or from the author's friends.Here are my main problems with it:1. The author doesn't use contractions in her dialogue. If it were once in a while, then fine. Likewise if the author was writing in a particular dialect. She's not, though, and she does it throughout the book. These are regular people - or at least they're supposed to be regular people until the big plot reveals toward the end - and regular people speak in contractions.2. The author isn't terrific at using correct grammar and punctuation, either. Lots of missing commas. I know I sound like I expect perfection (I don't), and I understand that liberties can be taken with the rules if you want your writing to sound a certain way. I do that myself, in fact. The problem is, as I've already explained, that the end result "sounds" like nothing in real life. I caught a handful of misused words that were pretty obvious, too - you could tell she was really aiming at a different word and just didn't realize what the word she ultimately chose meant.The end result is a story that sounds like it was written by a high school kid in a rush to get the words out and who isn't bothering to take the time to hear them in her head as she's writing them. Actually, I wouldn't swear that that's not the case: I remember when I went through an unfortunate phase of reading fan fiction, and that's kind of what this reads like: someone with the outline of a story in her head, but no real knowledge of how to flesh it out or get it to come alive for others. It's flat.3. The story is kind of lame, too. It's too bad, 'cause it has potential, even though it's awfully similar to other, better-written stories out there. That might have been overlook-able if there were good characters, but...the author didn't write characters. She wrote archetypes. You've got the damsel in distress, and the evil villain, and the good guy who isn't trusted until too late, and it's all so predictable and shallow. The protagonist is an cute-boy-blinded idiot who shouldn't have been allowed out of her parents' sight. The only reason the bad guy isn't twirling his mustache and tying someone to the railroad tracks is because the mustache would detract from his perfect looks. There's no depth anywhere in the whole story!Yes, yes, I know. It's young adult. That's no excuse. I've read some outstanding young adult fiction. I can't get over the idea that it's labeled YA because high school kids might not notice that this is really really bad.I realize that with the advent of Amazon's self publishing thing, there's been a quality issue. Where before, if a book was published you could be reasonably assured that, even if it didn't match your particular tastes, it would at least be well-written. And edited. Now, you might think you're getting a deal by paying a dollar or two for a new book that sounds great in the little two-paragraph blurb and is actually fan fiction that wandered onto the wrong website. In general, I'm still in favor of the self-published stuff, and I've found some gems among the garbage. But there is garbage. And I think this book is the garbage's leader.