Review: Not your mamma's after school special
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 07 9, 2014
First things’s first, this isn’t an after school special.  The message is clear, and it’s a good one, but don’t expect a father/daughter chat in the bedroom about the dangers of a toke or, drinking and driving.Instead, you’re going to find twisted tales of addiction.The first of the double-shot is titled, In the Pot.  Despite the warnings, Ray just wanted that one last high to get him through the final week of high school.  Matt crafts a tale about teenagers just being teenagers.  Not thing about the future, not caring about the present.  They are, after all, untouchable.  Nothing could happen to them.  That’s what everyone thought at that age anyway.  He does a good job of setting the characters up here and allowing you to know the stupidity of their actions, and there is severe consequences for impatience.He doesn’t create likable characters at all, these are the people you didn’t want to hang around, and it comes through loud and clear.In the story Blue, you go on the trip of a lifetime.  Not the kind of trip you want to take however.  The narrators girlfriend is dead, and something evil lurks deep in the blue.In this story Matt does an excellent job of creating confusion for the reader just as the confusion of the main character takes center stage.  There are all sorts of weird goings on and you don’t know what’s real and what is a fabrication of the mind.The Bottom Line:  Very much reminiscent of the drive-in double shot movies and the pulpy grindhouse style, you’ll be hard pressed to not find something to enjoy in this.  My only complaint is that sometimes he gets a bit wordy in the descriptions and it drags it down a tiny bit.  The plotting and the pacing are all spot on for the most part, and the conflict builds with deadly abandon in each of the stories.  It’s $1.99 on Amazon and I would pick it up by clicking the cover above.  Just don’t read it to your pre-teen daughter just yet.  Let her watch Full House first.