Avoid This One

I really wanted to love The Rules because the premise is awesome: Popular, privileged kids go on a scavenger hunt where it turns out there's more on the line than just winning a fabulous prize. The main character, Robin, is not a member of the clique, so obviously she's the one you want to root for. But then people start turning up dead or injured, and it becomes very apparent that someone has much bigger issues to resolve...and those include death and pain. Pretty good set up, right?

Honesty compels me to say that this book is so poorly executed that I wanted to give up almost immediately. But having stuck with books I disliked initially in the past, I felt honor-bound to continue. Unfortunately, it never got better, and what should have worked to be scary and fiendish turned out to be just a bunch of too stupid to live moments. People who obviously have no clue (pun not intended) do ridiculous things like splitting up and making out rather than worry that their very lives are at stake. There's no one to feel any sympathy for, and many I just wanted to go ahead and die already because they were just so unappealing. Even Robin, our heroine, falls far short of using her brains. I truly didn't care if she lived or died.

A huge turn off for me in the beginning was the jumping into points of view of random characters; it would have worked far better if there had been a core group whose heads we could get inside, rather than glimpses of the phobias and manias most of the characters seemed to have. I was also less than impressed with the style of writing itself; the phrases and the wording reeked of amateurism when it should set us up for the drama to follow. Do I really need to be told that Jinny is Robin's mom as the woman walks into the room? Nope.

Still, there were a couple of moments that keeps this one from getting the dreaded one star, including the groundwork of August's sister's death and the atmosphere of horror that sort of permeates the plot. However, I hate to be harsh, but this is one book I say you can avoid and not feel badly about skipping.

~taminator40

Dear Killer (This Book Needs to Die...and NOT in a Good Way)

Here's the disclaimer...I didn't finish this one, so take my review for what it's worth. It's not that the writing is bad; in fact, it's fairly engaging, and maybe with another topic, I might've been giving a totally different review. My biggest issue with the 60+ pages I read was the amorality of the title character. If there had been anything at all redeemable about her, I'd have kept on reading. And perhaps there is, later on in the book, but I just felt sorta icky reading a story told by a character who sees killing, even people she knows, as a business. Maybe that's not even it; maybe it's just that, no matter her childhood, I just couldn't root for a teen killer. This isn't Dexter, and killing people you know because you can is just not for me.

I'm giving this book 2 stars because I recognize it's unfair to judge an entire book on less than 100 pages, and I also recognize that maybe I'm missing something vital in not continuing to read. I just know, for me, this book just left me feeling unsettled, and not in a good way.

~taminator40

A Did Not Finish

I really wanted to like More Than This; it came very highly recommended to me by someone whose opinion I respect greatly. After the first few pages, wherein the main character, Seth, drowns, I was thinking...well, this has possibilities, even if I wasn't too keen on the writing style. Unfortunately, as soon as Seth "wakes up" wherever it is that he's gone after dying, I quickly lost interest. It's not that the story isn't well-written; I suspect Ness is a genius in many ways as his use of words and his slow descriptive style are certainly intelligent enough. It's just that...I didn't care. I at first felt badly for Seth, a young man with a troubled family, dying much too young; and then, I just didn't care at all because the story was taking so long to get going and was so cryptic that it was just...uninteresting, at least to me.

Full disclosure: This book was, unfortunately, a Did Not Finish for me. Like I said, I wanted to love it but there are just way too many books out there that capture me quickly for me to spend so long struggling to pay attention to one that just doesn't. Realizing it may just be me and my moodiness as a reader, I am still giving this novel 3/5 stars out of a sense of fairness. And who knows? I may try it again at some point and find myself completely enthralled. But for now...it's a definite pass for this reader.

~taminator40