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sarakomo 's review for:
The Midcoast
by Adam White
2022: Poorly structured and insincere and just plain wrong on many fronts
First off, the biggest disclosure of them all: my parents currently live in Damariscotta, and I spent about seven years of my life living here too. A lot of my gripes with this novel are super picky things that you would not care about unless you're from here. I completely acknowledge that, however there are still major problems with this novel that did not improve my opinion of it.
The second disclosure I have is that I read an ARC of this book. So there's definitely a possibility that some or many of these things that bothered me are improved in the final version, but something tells me that some of the bigger things did not get changed. The third disclosure is that my father was a FDNY firefighter during 9/11 and that I myself was present at the Boston Marathon bombings in 2013, so disparaging either of those experiences really doesn't sit well with me.
My biggest issue with this novel was the structure. At the outset, Andy is set up to be the narrator and general investigator of the crime (despite not having any actual direct involvement or any criminal justice background or training). However, the plot moves through narrators like bees move through flowers; if Andy were really the narrator, us readers should be learning facts as he does through the use of the first person POV. But in this novel, there are indiscriminate switches of perspective and multiple uses of the omniscient third person that make no sense and facts that our narrator never learns. The second person POV shows up on page 249 for no reason whatsoever and really made me lose it. There's a random foreshadowing parenthetical aside to the reader on page 117...from whom?! Andy? The author himself? Unclear all around.
The timeline was never clear, about whether the current scene was happening in the present or the past, or if Andy was watching it happen, or just having another character describe it to him. Sometimes, he was receiving emails about an event with Steph that happened over a decade ago, but they were being told with the clarity of an event happening in the present. It was extremely confusing and hard to tell who was actually present at which moment. The jumping between timelines was also not consistent with chapter breaks, which would have helped immensely.
There is zero consistency between the styling of certain elements in this book. For example, sometimes he quotes a written note in the text of the page, and other times, there's a photo of a handwritten note included in the body of the page. White tackles texting and emailing throughout the book as if he's never done either, and for sure did not consult any teen in their freshman year of college to see what they text like. Also, if the reader has already read a note, we don't need to see it again in a further chapter, you can just reference it! We know what it says already!
On top of all that, the names used around Damariscotta really ground my gears. If White can legally use Great Salt Bay School and Damariscotta Hardware as the actual true names of the local elementary school and hardware store, why on earth does he change the name of the local high school? Especially if you're going to call the road it sits on "Academy Hill" but not call the school "Lincoln Academy".... Also, the restaurant known as "the Schooner" in this novel is referred to as "Schooner's" by every person I've ever met in Midcoast Maine. That's not even far enough away to avoid a copyright complaint, so why not just get it right? And if it WERE the proper name of the restaurant, please capitalize the "T" in "The"!
The final nail in the coffin was an extremely upsetting scene towards the end of the book, where the narrator (or maybe the author, it's unclear) tried to evoke sympathy for himself (?) by wishing that he had been more involved in either the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings (??) or if that wasn't possible, more affected by 9/11 (???) As someone who is grateful everyday that she was not MORE affected by either of these events, this was a horrible couple of pages to read. A direct quote: "Some part of me wished that in fact, I had known someone who had been on a plane, or in the Towers, or in the Pentagon." I'm sorry, what the actual fuck? Anywho, I'd highly recommend avoiding pages 300-303 and maybe just the whole book in general, I wasn't really a fan.
Overall, I'm extremely disappointed that this is the novel currently representing Damariscotta. Guess I'll just have to go write a new one myself. The +1 for calling them Bean boots instead of duck boots is the only thing I can thumbs up in this book. And the fact that he got most of the geography correct. It was kind of fun reading about the murder taking place about a half mile away from my parents' house (but at the same time, incredibly concerning to read about that haha). Lastly, I'll just say, there's no angry sentiment here about improving downtown; we love our new accessible, free, public restrooms!
First off, the biggest disclosure of them all: my parents currently live in Damariscotta, and I spent about seven years of my life living here too. A lot of my gripes with this novel are super picky things that you would not care about unless you're from here. I completely acknowledge that, however there are still major problems with this novel that did not improve my opinion of it.
The second disclosure I have is that I read an ARC of this book. So there's definitely a possibility that some or many of these things that bothered me are improved in the final version, but something tells me that some of the bigger things did not get changed. The third disclosure is that my father was a FDNY firefighter during 9/11 and that I myself was present at the Boston Marathon bombings in 2013, so disparaging either of those experiences really doesn't sit well with me.
My biggest issue with this novel was the structure. At the outset, Andy is set up to be the narrator and general investigator of the crime (despite not having any actual direct involvement or any criminal justice background or training). However, the plot moves through narrators like bees move through flowers; if Andy were really the narrator, us readers should be learning facts as he does through the use of the first person POV. But in this novel, there are indiscriminate switches of perspective and multiple uses of the omniscient third person that make no sense and facts that our narrator never learns. The second person POV shows up on page 249 for no reason whatsoever and really made me lose it. There's a random foreshadowing parenthetical aside to the reader on page 117...from whom?! Andy? The author himself? Unclear all around.
The timeline was never clear, about whether the current scene was happening in the present or the past, or if Andy was watching it happen, or just having another character describe it to him. Sometimes, he was receiving emails about an event with Steph that happened over a decade ago, but they were being told with the clarity of an event happening in the present. It was extremely confusing and hard to tell who was actually present at which moment. The jumping between timelines was also not consistent with chapter breaks, which would have helped immensely.
There is zero consistency between the styling of certain elements in this book. For example, sometimes he quotes a written note in the text of the page, and other times, there's a photo of a handwritten note included in the body of the page. White tackles texting and emailing throughout the book as if he's never done either, and for sure did not consult any teen in their freshman year of college to see what they text like. Also, if the reader has already read a note, we don't need to see it again in a further chapter, you can just reference it! We know what it says already!
On top of all that, the names used around Damariscotta really ground my gears. If White can legally use Great Salt Bay School and Damariscotta Hardware as the actual true names of the local elementary school and hardware store, why on earth does he change the name of the local high school? Especially if you're going to call the road it sits on "Academy Hill" but not call the school "Lincoln Academy".... Also, the restaurant known as "the Schooner" in this novel is referred to as "Schooner's" by every person I've ever met in Midcoast Maine. That's not even far enough away to avoid a copyright complaint, so why not just get it right? And if it WERE the proper name of the restaurant, please capitalize the "T" in "The"!
The final nail in the coffin was an extremely upsetting scene towards the end of the book, where the narrator (or maybe the author, it's unclear) tried to evoke sympathy for himself (?) by wishing that he had been more involved in either the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings (??) or if that wasn't possible, more affected by 9/11 (???) As someone who is grateful everyday that she was not MORE affected by either of these events, this was a horrible couple of pages to read. A direct quote: "Some part of me wished that in fact, I had known someone who had been on a plane, or in the Towers, or in the Pentagon." I'm sorry, what the actual fuck? Anywho, I'd highly recommend avoiding pages 300-303 and maybe just the whole book in general, I wasn't really a fan.
Overall, I'm extremely disappointed that this is the novel currently representing Damariscotta. Guess I'll just have to go write a new one myself. The +1 for calling them Bean boots instead of duck boots is the only thing I can thumbs up in this book. And the fact that he got most of the geography correct. It was kind of fun reading about the murder taking place about a half mile away from my parents' house (but at the same time, incredibly concerning to read about that haha). Lastly, I'll just say, there's no angry sentiment here about improving downtown; we love our new accessible, free, public restrooms!