michael070's Reviews (200)

29 January 2024

Something Bad is Going to Happen - Jessie Stephens

This book is so bad. It’s emotional vandalism. It relies so hard on the reader feeling connected to Adella but she’s such a flat, uninteresting and uninterested character that she’s just frustrating to read. I’ve never read a book before where the main character doesn’t deserve to be the protagonist of a book. She should barely qualify as a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it tertiary character, let alone someone who has three hundred and something pages dedicated to her. There’s no character growth, no accountability, no introspection.

Structurally, the book is a mess. Why bother having ‘POV’ chapters if ~80% of them are from one character? Why have the ONLY interesting thing that happened in the book take place from the POV of someone who literally never shows up again in the story? The awkward time jumps back and forth were not well done at all, and

made it super obvious what actually happened to Jake, but because you know what’s going to happen you don’t ever get invested in him as a character. It’s always kinda gross when authors use a characters suicide purely as a ~growth moment~ for the protagonist, and it’s even worse when the protagonist doesn’t grow from it.

 

The editing was also lacking. At one point in the story Adella mentions being out for a drive or dinner or whatever with Jake on a Sunday night, and then half a page later he says he has to be home early to go to Sunday service the next morning??? Bruh. 

Rating: 8/100.

I usually really like Tsolkias’ writing but this was just way way too nihilistic for me to be able to get any enjoyment from it. I know that a lot of that is my not being able to relate at all to Ari but damn this is a bleak read.