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Search tags: huge-disappointment
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review 2015-05-05 23:15
If You Could See Me Now Review
If You Could See Me Now - Peter Straub

I'm so goddamned confused. I've reread the last ten pages three times now and I still have no clue what the fuck happened there at the end. I'm pretty sure this book's ending is a disaster. Several things make absolutely zero sense, but ONLYbecause of the last few pages.

I have no idea how they beat Alison Greening. I have no idea why fire was able to... what? Put her ghost back to sleep? What the fuck did all Miles's olfactory hallucinations have to do with anything? If Alison needed to wait until a certain time and date to kill Duane and Polar Bears, then how in the butt-fucking Christ did she kill the other girls? And why was she killing girls that looked like her? SHouldn't she have been entirely focused on the two men who raped and killed her? I'm. So. Confused.

(spoiler show)



The problem is, I enjoyed the hell out of If You Could See Me Now. I really, truthfully, honestly (convinced yet?) loved this little book. I just don't know what to think of the ending. If someone can cogently explain the problems I mentioned in the spoiler section above, cool beans. I'll raise my rating. But it seems like Straub simply gave up. Like he said "YOLO!" and fucked off to the Territories.

In summation: I want to love this goddamn book in its entirety, but right now I'm kinda peeved.

Final Judgment: If you could explain the ending to me now, that'd be great.

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review 2014-07-20 05:06
BLACKOUT Review
Blackout - Tim Curran

I need to preface this review with this: A great many reviewers, whose opinions I highly respect, loved this book, but this was one of those times where I completely disagree with them. This is a perfect example of the old saying, "You can't please everybody all the time." Not everyone is going to have the same experience with the books they read. I pretty much hated this book, and, now, I will try to explain why.

My distaste for this book began around the time I realized that Curran's favorite adverb is "very". Everything is very scary or very cold or very dark. Verily. I noted this, and even went as far as highlighting every instance of the word. There were two places where "very" was used three times... in one paragraph. Mind you, I missed a great many before I started tallying, but I still ended up with 15 by the 32% mark. This is a novella, so I'm guessing this was about page 40 or so. That's around the time I gave up the count. Then, at the 62% mark, Curran found another crutch word with which to bloat his text. This gem was "just". "Something we were all just fine with..." "we just pretended not to notice..." "it was just an optical illusion..." "just waiting for something..." I "just" did a search on my Kindle app for the word "just" and came back with too many instances to count. Try it yourself, and when you're done, try searching for "very". It ruined the book for me. 

On top of all the word repetition, Curran has a problem with vague antecedents and passive writing. I refuse to count how many times sentences began with "It was..." or "There was..." Oddly enough, I do not blame Curran for this. I blame his editing team. They let him down. It seemed there was no effort taken to provide a flow for the book. BLACKOUT reads like something turned in to a creative writing course. Or perhaps "just" a "very" clean first draft.

Then we have silly foibles like: That's exactly what I thought as I jogged up the steps to get inside myself. I do wonder what he'll do once he's inside himself (wink, wink, snicker, snicker). A simple rearrangement of one word could have fixed this goofy-sounding sentence. Example: That's exactly what I thought myself as I jogged up the steps to get inside. See? All better. 

The story itself does nothing new or worth mentioning, but I will say it reminded me of a hybrid built from the bones of King's THE MIST and the flesh of Brian Keene's THE DARKNESS AT THE EDGE OF TOWN. Maybe throw in a bit of INDEPENDENCE DAY and, more recently, SKYLINE. The characters are unremarkable, even the MC, Jon, is just an Every Man. His name might as well have been Jon Smith. The only character we get more than a passing feel for is Bonnie, who seemed to have some deep-seated issues involving sex. 

In summation: I truly wanted to like this book. The cover art is fantastic, and I'd heard so many good things about Curran that I decided to request this one from NetGalley. Unfortunately, based on what I found here, it will be some time before I give him another chance. 

*I received this book in return for my unbiased review, which you have just read. Thank you to DarkFuse and NetGalley for the chance to read this book.*

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review 2014-01-03 06:35
Across the Universe by Beth Revis
Across the Universe - Beth Revis

Bored.

That's how I describe myself throughout this book. It was a bit of a pain to get through to the end (oh look, I've been reading it since July) but I finally finished it. And there's not a lot to say.

I feel like this was really popular when I was younger, and I see how it would have appealed to my younger self. But for the me in the now, there was a lot of scenes in here I found unnecessary, dragging, and boring. I didn't care much about the characters, didn't care much about who was unfreezing the frozens and what their goals were (wasn't expecting who it was though, so there's that).

 

I just don't know. I read books like this that I expect to like and I think, maybe I'm just too old for YA these days, because all I can think about is how I would have certainly gone crazy over it had I read it years ago. But now, all I can muster is a "meh."

I have the sequel sitting on my shelf and I'm side-eying it. It's not going to be on my reading list any time soon, I don't think.

 

(psst. my first review of 2014!)

 

(edit: welp, this book isn't as old as I thought. Only 2011? I was thinking more along the lines of around 5 years old. oh well.)

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