til_naught_wakes's reviews
52 reviews

James Patterson has been recommended to me time and time again. I saw this, and it sounded interesting (no pun intended). Needless to say, it was not. This was a waste of a purchase. Most of my annotations were complaints about the writing style—which utlized entirely too many ellipses for my liking, but I digress—characters, plot, or all of the above.

I don't mind unlikeable characters. They're fun! They're interesting! These were not. These characters were frustratingly cliché and felt straight up petulant at times. Perfectly two dimensional with no development. Sometimes it seemed as though they slipped out of their own barely defined characters, an impressive feat, I'll admit.

This book was insipid, and repetitive, and utilized every damn cliché it could. I guessed the "plot twist" in the very beginning, and from there all of the supposed twists landed flat. Not to mention that the ending came completely out of nowhere in some last ditch effort at horror.

Why everyone is regarding this book so highly in the reviews I'll never know. The only aspect of this I enjoyed with the lack of romance and the Noise in principle.

Originally, I rated this 2.3 out of 5 but rounding and such.

Needless to say, I was quite disappointed. They say not to judge a book by its cover, but I certainly did. Despite finding it in the paranormal section of my library, I expected a more horror or even thriller-esque story; however that is not the case. Dont get me wrong: the cover art is gorgeous and undoubtedly intriguing. But the writing is less so.

The writing style is simple, which some might appreciate but I don't prefer. That wasn't the problem. What was off-putting was the sporadic usage of more "educated" words sprinkled into the otherwise rather unremarkable writing. It read like when someone writes an overall decent essay, but they spoil it by replacing random words with "better" synonyms. To say the least, it's jarring and drew me out of the story.

Another issue with the style was the point of view. As someone who likes to annotate books (although I didn't for this one) I consider nearly, if not all, choices as purposeful by the author. With that in mind, the random switches from the dominate point of view, first, to second for seemingly no reason at all was jarring. The first time it switched, I immediately tried to figure out if the main character was telling the story to someone else, et cetera, et cetera. In the end, it held no significance, leaving me baffled.

The book also has odd half-chapters under subheadings that were still considered as inside the chapter. They were interesting and definitely added to the story, but the organization was a bit off-putting at first, if not downright confusing.

Warning: getting into the bit with spoilers.
If you don't mind the writing style, then the story itself isn't awful.

Spoiler

In fact, the dream logic behind the invisibility being a self-defense mechanism was enrapturing,

and the queer representation was spectacular. That being said, I think the execution was what brought down the rating.

Spoiler

While the invisibility dimension had build up in certain areas, such as Pie's mother and Felix, others felt forced, grasping at straws even. The "we're all buddies now!" outcome, especially for those with invisibility, felt rushed, forced even. The "punk" theme felt vaguely reminiscent of My Immortal, which, obviously, isn't a great thing to be compared to. It also felt forced. If that's the characters' opinions, cool, but it felt as though the author was trying to prove to the reader that punk is cool and superior rather than the characters themselves. It wasn't convincing on their part.

Overall, the book wasn't awful. I even found myself engaged at certain points; however, it isn't one I would really consider reading again or recommending to others.