A Spoiler Free Bit About The Book
If you want my opinion . . .
Impossible is the story of Lucy, a girl whose family is cursed. She has to try and break the curse. That's it.
My Review
But it's actually more terrible than the description I gave it. I haven't read a book I've disliked this much since The Awakening but at least that had vampires in it. This book really had nothing going on.
By the first page I knew I would hate the entire thing. There were just so many commas and far too many adverbs. If you know me, you know my hatred of adverbs. But it wasn't just the technical way it was written, I also felt a distance between myself and the protagonist, Lucy. It was the way Werlin went about her third person. I'm not having a go at third person here, sometimes it can be just as personal as the first person, my favourite example is the GONE series by Michael Grant, but I don't think Werlin understood what her readers needed from her when she put Lucy to page. After just one page, my expectations had plummeted and there they stayed.
When I got to chapter two I was fuming about the adverbs. The situation just seemed to get worse and worse. Let me explain for those of you who've never heard me drone on about it before. Adverbs suck power from writing. Don't say, 'stepped quietly', for example, say 'crept'. Use a stronger verb, please! Adverbs are lazy and sound ridiculous after a while. Here are some examples from Impossible.: 'suddenly', 'abruptly', 'promptly', 'predictably', 'pathetically', 'appealingly', and my personal favourite: 'ostentatiously'. You've got to be kidding, right?
But wait! There's more! Not only were adverbs on every single page, multiple in fact. Sometimes they were used next to each other; 'gravely, decisively', 'respectfully, attentively', and this one was used two sentences in a row; 'slowly, cautiously'. If that's not lazy, sloppy writing, I don't know what is.
Getting over my aversion to adverbs was impossible but there was more to hate in this book than just this. Lucy's internal monologue grated on me fast. She didn't seem to trust herself even a small bit. I wanted some strength from her, even just a little. Despite being told she was 'fearless' and 'strong', I saw no evidence of it.
The rest of the characters were a bit bizarre. They were realistic up to a point but just oh so boring. Their personalities were lacking. There wasn't one interesting character in the whole thing.
There were random bits of specific description about everyone moving around, picking stuff up and putting it down again and I wondered if Werlin had to reach a certain number of words. There was so much stuff still in the book that I would've cut after one draft. I don't know who Werlin's editor was but it's safe to say I would've turned this book into something exciting. Impossible was just dull, there's nothing else I can say.
I don't care if I'm being picky and too harsh here but what's with the title? Impossible? Is that the best they could come up with? There were so many other options they could've gone for. What possessed them to go with this?
After chapter ten I started skimming because I wanted the ordeal over with. The more the book went on, the angrier I became. At one point I threw it to the other end of the sofa. Because how come this drivel was published?
Evaluation
Overall 2/10
Would I recommend it? No. There was nothing I enjoyed about this book.
Would I look up the author? No. I couldn't bear it.
Impossible was, in a word, dull.
Molly Looby
Author / Ghostwriter / Editor / Blogger / Reviewer / Wrimo / Movellian / ZA Ready
molly.looby@hotmail.com
No comments:
Post a Comment