Review: David Wailing Continually Surprises Me
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 03 6, 2013
This book blew my mind eleven ways from Sunday. Every time I thought I knew what was going on, something else would happen. "Oh! Wait - No... What?" This plot was so carefully crafted that it makes me, an aspiring author, want to throw in the towel. I can never write anything this intricate and suspenseful. Little clues are given to you throughout the story, things that seem insignificant and then later are expertly brought back in to show their importance. The last 30-40% of the book I couldn't stand to put it down, I felt so wound up. The ending will make you want to kill him, but it is still worth reading this book. David Wailing is great at twists. Some other reviewers say it doesn't make sense or they were confused - I think that is the point. I also think it's meant to be more funny than anything. (I would love to ask him if he knows the answer to that final twist.)There are a bunch of cringe-worthy grammatical errors that didn't get caught, and a few that might have been intentional. Although such things irritate me, they were not enough to make me dislike the book. I still think he is an amazing author and I recommend his Auto series as well. I read them first and found a couple of references in Fake Kate that tied to that series, which is always a fun inside joke to me, when authors allude to their own work. (Or, I should say, the Auto series refers to a few things I read in this book. I think this book came first.)The music and club scenes in the story are very far from my world - in fact I was sure he was making up the musical genre "House" as it sounds like total crap, but it actually exists. ("Porch," as far as I can tell, is made up.) Initially I found the book depressing because the lifestyles of these people are so far from my own and seem very empty, but the mystery kept me reading. I give him a lot of credit as an author that he wrote a compelling narrative about characters who I would never hang out with in real life.David Wailing publishes his work independently, and mainstream publishers, you don't know what you're missing. If any of them ever rejected his work, they're idiots. This book will be swirling around in my mind for a long time. Worth the money spent.