Review: A Fun World, But a Flat Plotline and Characters
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 08 29, 2013
This book has all the makings of something I'd go dingy over. It's in Wonderland, for one thing. There's a bunch of zany characters to choose from. It should be, for all intents and purposes, the perfect book to add to my shelf.I couldn't focus on the story through the entire book.*hands-wide shrug* I don't know. I've looked at this book every to Sunday. The elements were there. The world-building was GREAT! Ms. Sheridan did a fantastic job of laying out the foundation of this world without a lot of info-dumping. There were some pretty thick paragraphs of information. Don't get me wrong, but it wasn't for world-building. It was for character-building. We'll get to that in a second. The setting was brilliantly penned.The character building wasn't. It was passive. There were large chunks of information that slowed the story so much with backstory and why-saying that I had to stop and ask myself where the story was. Yes. I understand that's sometimes necessary. I enjoy it occasionally. I do. Not every book has to be a wild-roller-coaster ride. I think it was simply the fact that there seemed to be so much of it. It left the story itself feeling bogged down.It didn't help that we had multiple POV's going on. I'm not opposed to that. I'm not, but it makes it tougher for me to keep straight especially during weeks like this week where I barely have three brain cells to scrap together. This book was a struggle for me to stay on top of. It wasn't the fact that there was anything that complicated because there just wasn't. But as I was reading/skimming/reading, I kept running into instances where I thought I'd missed something, only to go back, force myself to read through the parts I'd skimmed and come up just as blank as I was the first time. Here's an example:A knock at the door shattered the moment, causing Marc's eyes to pop back open just quickly enough to catch the look of horror Gwen was wearing. A flush crept into his cheeks, and immediately  Gwen felt as though she should apologize. But for what?"I'll get it." Gwen took several steps back, stopping only when the sharp corner of an end table hit her hip."It's for me.""Oh. I didn't know you were expecting anyone," Gwen said, fumbling for words, for a way to fill the silence.It's small, I know, but there's a missing emotional connection here. I didn't feel what happened in this moment. I feel like I've missed something. The book has a lot of these small, missing emotional transition moments. I can't tell if it's a mix of over-exaggerated non-verbal emotional descriptors, or...I don't know...reactions that didn't make sense to me. Why would she feel the need to apologize because he blushed? When I read that scene, the look on his face said, "Oh, that was awesome. We should do that again. Oh, crap! Wait! What if she thought I was acting inappropriately? Oh, shoot! What's she thinking? Why won't she say something?" It also feels a bit over-dramatic. They kissed. Big deal. Maybe I'm just showing my cranky, callous side. I don't know.Anyway, I found myself chasing down missing emotional reasoning more than actually reading the book. The plot was fun. The world was great. But all in all, it's not a book I'll read again. I found it to be a frustrating, and I just can't put my finger on why.I received a free copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.