Review - A Monstrous Place: A Tale From Between (DNF)

A Monstrous Place: A Tale From Between (Tales From Between #1)
by Matthew Stott
Date: 2015
Publisher: Fenric Books
Reading level: MG
Book type: prose novel
Pages: 178
Format: e-book
Source: Amazon.ca

Things live between awake and asleep. In the moment after your eyes grow too heavy to stay open, but before the dreams take you...

Molly lives with her Mother in a large, creaking house that she wishes were haunted. There may be no ghosts, but what about monsters? Monsters with an unending appetite that like to steal people away in the black of night.

When, one morning, Molly wakes to find her own Mother missing, she discovers she has a potentially fatal task ahead of her. With only her dead Gran and a retired adventurer by her side, Molly must travel to a dangerous and untrustworthy land somewhere between awake and asleep, before her Mother finds herself planted in a most monstrous garden.

(synopsis from Goodreads)

I got completely fed up with this one. Took a break, came back... got even more fed up.

Tips for authors:

1. Learn how to punctuate before you publish a book.

2. Kids are not stupid. Don't write down to them.

3. If you haven't captured my attention by 10%, you've lost me. You've also probably lost your target audience.

DNF at 10%

Review - The Untimely Deaths of Alex Wayfare

The Untimely Deaths of Alex Wayfare (Alex Wayfare #2)
by M. G. Buehrlen
Date: 2016
Publisher: Diversion Books
Reading level: YA
Book type: prose novel
Pages: 228
Format: e-book
Source: Amazon.ca

As Alex's sister loses the fight against cancer, a race for a cure sends Alex traveling back and forth through time, dodging enemy Descenders who seem to know Alex's every move before she does. Realizing her enemies have privileged information, Alex fears there is a traitor hiding within the small band of allies she's grown to trust.

A traitor who might bring Gesh straight to Alex's front door.

While Gesh closes the gap in Base Life, and Blue's true identity surfaces, Alex stumbles upon a secret about her reincarnations that will change her life, or her lives, forever.

(synopsis from Goodreads)

I'm so disappointed. This book had the potential to be amazing, but it fell so flat. I've been waiting for this sequel for a couple of years now, wanting some resolution to the cliff-hanger ending of the first book. Not only was that cliff-hanger never really resolved, but the ending of this book reads like the end of the series. Not cool.

Please, dear author, I want some more...

The premise of this series is what I found so intriguing about the first book. A reincarnating time traveller in the body of a geeky seventeen-year-old girl? Sounds like my type of story. But...

It's all a matter of taste...

This installment of Alex's story seemed to bring up so many rules for the time travel and reincarnation, making everything seem really complicated and, at times, overly convenient. Alex suffers from Special Snowflake Syndrome. She's a Mary Sue when it comes to time travel, since she has skills that nobody else has. On the other hand, she's also self-deprecating to the point that it grows very tiresome.

My biggest complaint with this sequel, however, is that nothing happened. Well, some things happen, but not like in the first book, with Alex diving down into multiple lives, exploring her past selves in a mix of action and romance. This book is basically a "kid with cancer" book in disguise, with a whole lot of angst about Alex's sister, Audrey, and her worsening condition. In fact, Alex doesn't even go back in time until well after the halfway point, and she only goes on two missions in total... both with the aim of saving her sister. Meanwhile, there's the whole issue with Blue, Alex's partner/soulmate, running as an undercurrent throughout the whole story. I'm not pleased with the way it was handled. It comes across as kind of cheap and convenient, and makes Alex look like an idiot (she's kind of oblivious, anyway, as are quite a few characters in the story... which is also tiresome, because you feel like you're reading about morons who can't put two and two together to save their own lives).

I was thinking this would be a three-star read as I was going along, especially once I hit some action in the last third of the book. But then the ending came. One of my favourite parts of The 57 Lives of Alex Wayfare was that ending... even though it made us wait. But it was a good kind of waiting, full of anticipation and wondering. Here, though, we're treated to some sappy word vomit from Alex on the nature of life, and then the book just ends. No hints about any of the questions that are still unanswered. No hint of any third book. If that was it... well, that would be a huge waste. A waste of a great premise, a waste of a great love story... and a waste of the reader's time.

Let's get technical...

The sentence fragments drove me nuts. I don't remember the first book being quite so bad. (Maybe it was... but it had enough of a plot to make me overlook that sort of thing.) I also grew tired of correcting the punctuation in my Kindle copy. And, for future reference, writers: "whir" is a noise; "whirl" is a spinning action. If your mind is actually "whirring", you need to see a doctor.

The verdict...

I'm not ready to give up on this series, if there turns out to be a third book. I do like the premise. I just wish this book had had more action and less philosophical monologuing.

Quotable moment:

My whole life is made up of lies now. I wear them like scarves and hats and little flowers in my hair.

But then again, doesn’t everyone?

Premise: 3/5
Plot: 1/5
Characters: 2/5
Pace: 1/5
Writing: 3/5
Editing: 2/5
Originality: 3/5
Enjoyment: 1/5

Overall Rating: 2 out of 5 ladybugs

Top Ten Tuesday - Ten Childhood Characters I'd Love To Revisit As An Adult

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted at The Broke and the Bookish.

This week's topic is Ten Childhood Characters I'd Love To Revisit As An Adult. Where are they now? These are the characters I'd love to see updates on. (These are not necessarily characters that I encountered when I was a child. Some of them are just characters that I want to know more about.)

Spoiler Warning: Because we're talking about events that would happen after the ends of the books, there may be some spoilers here. Please don't keep reading if you see the cover for a book you haven't read yet!

Ten Childhood Characters I'd Love To Revisit As An Adult:

Birdy from Catherine, Called Birdy
by Karen Cushman

What happens after the happily ever after and the honeymoon is over? While this isn't a fairy tale, it does sort of end like one, with the promise of a marriage. I'd like to know how Birdy's life turned out with her husband. Did she have lots of kids? Was she happy? Did she die in childbirth, leaving her young husband a widower? Anything's possible, I guess...

Christopher Robin from Winnie-the-Pooh
by A. A. Milne

I know he was a real person, but I'm talking here about the character, the little boy who played with his animal friends in the Hundred Acre Wood. What did he grow up to be? A veterinarian? An environmentalist who protects forests and the creatures who live in them? A fantasy writer? Who knows?

The Darkling from The Demon in the Wood
by Leigh Bardugo

The Darkling was an interesting character for me, at least in the first book of The Grisha trilogy. This short story gives us a glimpse of the boy who would become the Darkling, but that's all it is: a glimpse. It doesn't really show us why he became the way he did, which was always one of the more intriguing questions of this series... and one that was never answered to my satisfaction.

Jack from Room
by Emma Donoghue

Poor little Jack. He had a rough start. I'd be really interested to see how he turned out. His resilience may have pulled him through.

Liesel from The Book Thief
by Markus Zusak

I know we got a tiny taste of this, but there was a lot that was left out. I'd like to know about that other part of her life that was mentioned but not explored.

Penryn from the Penryn & the End of Days series
by Susan Ee

Did the third book in the series tie everything up in a nice, shiny bow? Yes... and that's the problem. I don't buy the ending, and I want a different one. I want to know what happens to Penryn, Raffe, Paige, and all the other characters... and have it make sense. How did they rebuild the world after the angel apocalypse? Or did they?

Po and Bundle from Liesl & Po
by Lauren Oliver

This is such a cute book that I wish had been around when I was younger. I liked the story... but I wanted to know more about the ghosts, Po and Bundle. There are stories there that were never told. How did they become ghosts? What were their lives like before? What about after the events in this book?

Polly and Tom from Fire and Hemlock
by Diana Wynne Jones

The main character and love interest spent a number of years apart in this story, and things didn't always go smoothly when they did reunite. I'd like to know what their relationship was like after the end of the book. A bit awkward, I'm guessing. Although, they would have a lot to talk about!

Ramona Quimby from the Ramona books
by Beverly Cleary

We do get to see Ramona grow up a bit throughout her series, though she is only 10 or so in the last book. I'd like to know what happened to her as a teenager and young adult. If it's anything like her childhood, her adolescence was probably hilarious.

Renesmee from Breaking Dawn
by Stephenie Meyer

Okay, yes, I hated this book. But I've got a sort of morbid curiosity about this one. Did Jacob really mate when her when she was physically mature... at the age of seven? Maybe he got thrown in jail because of it, and then there was this big trial and vampires and shape-shifters became known to the whole world, and the Volturi lost their edge and went insane and killed all the other vampires on the planet... (A girl can dream, can't she?)

What are some favourite childhood characters you'd like to check in with?