Review: Great story -- weird tonal shifts
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 03 4, 2014
Okay, start with the good: I liked the story. I like the setup. I like the family. I think this is a great little read for horror fans. It didn't exactly scare me (but very little does I'm so jaded by the genre these days) but it did keep me interested. That doesn't mean I think the book is perfect. First off, the book slips into first person and third person voices far too often. There's also a weird fourth person omniscient voice that is supposed to be the main narrator but he knows too much so it teeters on third person. It's just too much. Pick one voice and stick with it. For this book, I would go with third person. You need to get into multiple characters' heads and  you can't do that in a first person voice that tends to slide around.Second, the sex scenes are really ludicrous. If I had to guess, a teenage (or early twenties) boy wrote this. While it works for the first person teenage stuff, it does not work in the rest of the book. The early love scene, for example, shows that this is a kid that's probably never actually given a girl an orgasm. The scene reads more like porn than realistic interplay between three people in a bed together. It's just odd. Also, I think the author tries a little too hard with the "threesome" stuff right off the bat. Plus, Sexaholics? Really? While I know there are support groups for individuals claiming they're addicted to sex, the odds of two people with the same affliction marrying each other and then going to a group called Sexaholics are laughably slim.Finally, while I have no doubt that certain kids sell pot and are math geniuses, this book tries to make every kid edgy and driven and it just doesn't ring true. I would tone it down just a little bit. Make the kids just a little more believable (and I wouldn't date their wardrobe). My only other quibble with the book is that, a lot of the time, there aren't any real emotions attached to the characters. Scenes are written with an almost clinical overview that doesn't match the events occurring in front of us. Also, there are a few typos, I noticed more unnecessary capitalization than I'm usually comfortable with, but I managed to push it out of my mind to enjoy the story. This is a solid 3.5 stars. I'm not sure if I'll continue with the series -- but I will think about it.