Those That Wake by Jesse Karp
My rating: 3/5 cats
here be f-bombs!!
in the book, not my review. i am a lady.
i don’t know.
this book is all right, i just didn’t really get caught up in it, despite my high expectations.
my annotation for the world’s best RA group reads thusly:
Mal’s brother has vanished. Laura’s parents do not recognize her. People on the streets are glued to their devices and do not interact. A building that no one seems to notice, one which is bigger on the inside than the outside, contains doorways that lead to farflung places in the city. Set in a dystopian New York City, several people attempt to find answers to the questions that haunt them, and try to salvage what remains of humanity.
(yeah—when i annotate, i use capital letters, so what?)
but it sounds fun, right? well, it is only so-so. my gripes include the big bad force being called global dynamic which, even though i have totally missed this last season of fringe, still sounds awfully familiar. in fact, a lot of this book could play as a mid-series x-files or a fringe episode. and that’s fine, i like teevee, but i was hoping for something a little more “wow,” a little less familiar, something with zazz.
the character of mike was pretty poor, in my mind. an adult character, regardless of whether the book is intended for teens, should behave like an adult character. as a teacher, even a disillusioned teacher who has begun to dislike students, resorting to playground-style taunts and mannerisms w/r/t the deepening closeness of mal and laura is just absurd. i can’t picture any of my high school teachers, even the cruelest of them, performing the equivalent of “ooooh—you like a girrrrrrrrl” dance, even drunk at the prom. surely by that point some dignity has been achieved?
but it had definite high points: i did like the ending, i appreciated that there was no falling into a hallmark feel-gooderie zone, it had good energy and characters with a lot of damage, the way i like…
so—yeah—this is utterly unhelpful to anyone considering reading this. sorry. it is a fine way to pass the time, but all in all, i am glad i borrowed this from work instead of owning it for all time.
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