Review: How to Be Bad: 3.75/5 Stars from Jason P. Crawford
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 05 4, 2014
Today, I am reviewing the Paranormal story How to be Bad by Michael La Ronn. This is a story that focuses on a young attorney, Bebe McFerrin, and her interactions with the demon who appears to offer her revenge and immunity. You can do anything you want, says Ladouche (yes, that’s his name) and suffer no consequences…but you must gather souls for me. What makes this book unique is that is a Decision Select novel, harkening back to the days of Choose Your Own Adventure. Formatted for ebook readers, the story allows the reader to select his/her path through hyperlinks.I give this book a 3.75/5. Here is my breakdown.Characters: 3/5. I found the two main characters, Bebe and Ladouche, interesting if slightly two-dimensional. This can be excused in part by the nature of the read (you can’t give Bebe too much character or it feels like you’re taking away the readers’ choices) or the nature of the characters (Ladouche is a demon; whaddaya want from him?) but I just wished I knew a little bit more about them.Plot/Storyline: 4/5. The ideas in this story intrigued me. Like many, I have fond memories of the Choose Your Own Adventure stories, and I was curious to see how this could be implemented in ebook form. It was well done; the action moved forward and gave you decisions at critical moments, and these decisions really mattered at the end. As an aside, Michael did a great job giving us little “flag” pages to notify us when we’d gone too far instead of clicking a decision link.Flow: 4/5. The story flowed and the plot moved onward with little diversion. I found the replacement of profanities distracting (I had to look twice when I saw the word birch) simply because the replacements seemed so out of place, but overall the story moved smoothly and well..Spelling/Grammar: 5/5. I did not notice any sort of grammar or spelling issues with this book. The proofreading was well done and the time/money spent was well invested..Overall: 3.75/5. What an intriguing idea! Michael has given us a story in which we get to truly be in the protagonist’s shoes. One thing that I wish is that he had stayed away from the 1st person – I’m not fond of that POV in general, and, for some reason, it made it harder for me to be immersed because the language kept referring to “I,” as if Bebe were someone else. Perhaps a case could be made for 2nd person?Overall, an interesting read and well worth your time, especially if you remember those CYOA books like I do. Thank you, Michael!