Review - Ada Twist, Scientist

Ada Twist, Scientist
by Andrea Beaty
illustrated by David Roberts
Date: 2016
Publisher: Abrams Books
Reading level: C
Book type: picture book
Pages: 32
Format: e-book
Source: library

Scientist Ada has a boundless imagination and has always been hopelessly curious. Why are there pointy things stuck to a rose? Why are there hairs growing inside your nose? When her house fills with a horrific, toe-curling smell, Ada knows it’s up to her to find the source. What would you do with a problem like this? Not afraid of failure, Ada embarks on a fact-finding mission and conducts scientific experiments, all in the name of discovery. But, this time, her experiments lead to even more stink and get her into trouble!

(synopsis from Goodreads)

This is a nice rhyming picture book with very cute illustrations. I felt a little uncomfortable while reading it, though, as it seemed to portray a girl with a developmental delay. Now, there's nothing wrong with that, except that it wasn't really addressed, and the parents didn't do anything other than adapt to her behaviour (even though that meant she caused hundreds of dollars of damage to the hallway). I'm not sure that's a great message.

I loved seeing the characters of colour, and encouraging girls to take an interest in science is admirable. The illustrations are top-notch and absolutely adorable. Unfortunately, the text let the book down. There wasn't much story, really.

I've seen better reviews on some of the author's other books like Rosie Revere, Engineer. I might have to give that one a try.

Premise: 1/5
Meter: 4/5
Writing: 3/5
Illustrations: 4/5
Originality: 2/5

Enjoyment: 1/5

Overall: 2.29 out of 5

Review - The Universes Inside the Lighthouse

The Universes Inside the Lighthouse (Balky Point Adventures #1)
by Pam Stucky
Date: 2014
Publisher: Wishing Rock Press
Reading level: YA
Book type: prose novel
Pages: 221
Format: e-book
Source: Amazon.ca

Two teenagers on a summer vacation on an unassuming island ...
A mysterious girl who appears in photographs taken decades apart ...
A science lab set up in a place that exists both nowhere and everywhere ...
A storage closet that is far more than it seems ...
A parallel Earth, exactly like our own ...
A universe made up entirely of ghosts ...
An entity that is taking over innocent lives and infiltrating the universes ...

Adventure, mystery, travel through space and time to find a man who seeks to rip the universes apart. Reminiscent of A Wrinkle in Time with just a dash of Doctor Who ...

and it all begins ... inside the lighthouse.

(synopsis from Goodreads)

Wow. This was bad. So, so bad. I'm exhausted after struggling through this, and I don't even feel like writing a review. But I'm fed up with awful books with misleadingly high Goodreads ratings. I'm tired of wasting my time on stuff that should be good, but isn't.

The first problem with this book is that it doesn't know who its audience is. It's billed as "MG/YA sci-fi", but I don't think it would appeal to either age group. The characters are supposed to be 17 and 18, so they're driving around and letting their hormones make them all angsty. On the other hand, they act young. Some act so young, in fact, that I assumed they had an intellectual disability.

The main character (or so I thought, until near the end when the point of view jumped around to the point of distraction) is Emma, a girl whose defining characteristic is having a crush on Ben. She's also an introvert. That's literally the only character development we get for most of the story, which made Emma an excruciatingly boring character. Charlie is Emma's twin brother. He's old enough to go lusting after girls, but chants things like, "Aliens, aliens, aliens," when he discovers the identity of his new friends. And he doesn't just do this once. I guess it was supposed to be a character trait or quirk, but it just made him come across as someone with some sort of disorder. Ben is the guy Emma's lusting after. He's walking arrogance who has dark hair and... yep. That's about it. (The physical descriptions for many of the characters were either non-existent, or came way too late; we found out at 85% that Charlie had green eyes.) Eve is one of the "aliens", but she looks human, and of course she's blonde and beautiful and Ben and Charlie are both attracted to her, which leads to jealousy on Emma's part. (Although, when Charlie finds out that Eve isn't human, it leads to a kind of icky reaction where he pulls his arm away from her and asks if she's even really even a girl, as if the only thing that matters is what's hidden under her clothes.) Eve's father, Milo, is kind of a blank, although I winced when he made an inappropriate comment about his daughter's body odour in front of her new friends. Dr. Waldo is a sterotypical absent-minded professor who speaks in run-on sentences and has overly expressive body language. The villain's name is Vik, and he's pretty much what you'd expect from a bad villain: black hair, black clothes, perma-sneer, and a bad habit of talking about his evil plans in front of the protagonist.

Another problem was the way the characters--as well as the whole book--were written. I couldn't put my finger on it at first, but then I realized that it reminded me of old kids' novels from the 1950s. Some of the word choices made the characters sound like they were in their 80s. And Emma and Charlie calling each other "dork" didn't help; do teenagers today even use that word? The characters could go from sounding like a child to a grandparent within a paragraph. It was really awkward. Also awkward were the emotions. They didn't fit half the time. Sometimes they were too strong, sometimes they were too weak, and sometimes they were just plain wrong, given the situation. Another thing that reminded me of those older books was the subtle sexism. The women had to organize the potluck. A woman came over to watch her husband fix a leak (because, apparently, women can't do plumbing themselves). Eve swooned into Ben's arms after an emotional outburst. No. It's the 21st century. I don't want to read that kind of crap.

For a book about travelling through multiple universes, the story is actually super boring. I think the main idea was that the teens were trying to stop Vik from destroying the method of travel throughout the universes. But you could be forgiven for not noticing. There were so many info-dumps, so many perseverating ramblings about things that had nothing to do with the story (like the names of the planets in a parallel solar system). I could definitely see where the author drew inspiration for parts of the story. The Void reminded me of the Dementors from the Harry Potter series, and the story about the planet that had been affected by The Void reminded me a lot of the movie Serenity. And yet, the rest was strangely unimaginative. At one point, the teens end up on another planet with "primitive natives", and we don't even find out anything about them (other than the fact that they can apparently change gender... but I suspect that was just a typo). Later, two eat a meal on Eve's home planet, and they eat... steak and salad. With sporks. With all the infinite possibilities, why are they eating a Western meal with a familiar utensil? There's too much of a reliance on stereotypes, which leads to the book feeling even younger (I'm thinking of the ghost planet in particular, where everyone wears flowing dresses, glides around, and talks like this: "Helloooooooo!").

The writing and editing were pretty bad. The writing was unsophisticated and disjointed. Conversations were especially hard to follow, since often questions would be asked but not answered... until pages later, when someone would bring the topic back up, as if it had never been left in the first place. It made me wonder if the book had been really badly edited, with new passages clumsily added, but I don't really feel like this book was edited at all. There were so many punctuation errors, and even duplicate words, especially toward the back half of the book. And, overall, the book's message is preachy, and kind of insulting to introverts. I wasn't impressed.

What little enjoyment I got out of this one was unintentional, and mostly from how bad it was. You can see how bored my brain was when it saw the following passage as dirty:

A young, dark-haired man stood in the empty space where there once was a door, covered in debris and dust from the explosion, a satisfied grin on his face, a giant weapon in his hands.

Am I the only one who found that funny? Probably. I was punchy and tired, though, from slogging through the utterly drab plot, so I guess I was looking for entertainment wherever I could find it.

Quotable moment:

Glen opened the door.

There stood the aliens.

"Eve!" said Ben and Charlie.

"Milo?" said Emma.

Amy Renee, who had joined her husband at the door, looked from the people standing in the doorway to her children and back. "So you're the aliens then?" she said matter-of-factly, as though people claiming to be aliens appeared on her doorstep every day. "I'm not so sure I should let you in."

Premise: 2/5
Plot: 1/5
Characters: 0/5
Pace: 0/5
Writing: 1/5
Editing: 0/5
Originality: 0/5
Enjoyment: 1/5

Overall Rating: 0.63 out of 5 ladybugs

Review - The Adventures of Benny

The Adventures of Benny
by Steve Shreve
Date: 2006
Publisher: TwoLions
Reading level: C
Book type: short stories
Pages: 162
Format: e-book
Source: Amazon.ca

As Benny goes on five adventures that take him from the woods behind his house to the pyramids of Egypt, he comes face to face with a host of bad guys—pirates, a mummy, and even his very own Booger-Man! And what about all those monkeys?

Join Benny on these wild adventures as he confronts all things hilarious and grotesque. Black-and-white art on every spread of the book will appeal to reluctant readers as well as fans of comics, graphic novels, and illustrated novels.

(synopsis from Goodreads)

In spite of being divided into chapters, The Adventures of Benny is really just a collection of (mostly) unrelated stories about a boy named Benny and his... well, adventures. The book reads really young, and though I don't have a problem with reading children's books in general, this one probably isn't going to appeal to most adults. Kids (especially boys) would probably love it, though.

"Chapter 1: Bigfoot or The Value of a Smelly Friend" - This first story had sort of a fairy-tale feel to it, with a crafty wolf and the threat of being boiled up in a stew for dinner.


"Chapter 2: The Mummy or Another Great Use for Toilet Paper" - Okay, I'll admit, I kind of laughed at King Butthankhamen (aka King Butt). It was a pretty silly story, but kind of entertaining.


"Chapter 3: Pirates or The Truth About Life on the High Seas" - This is probably the weakest story. Aside from the cute pirate names, there wasn't a lot of plot.


"Chapter 4: The Booger-Man or A Good Argument for Not Picking Your Nose" - This one was obviously written out of frustration over living with a booger-wiping kid, but it's still kind of amusing. Especially the part about the dog.


"Chapter 5: Monkey Island or The Advantage of Opposable Thumbs" - This story I also thought was a bit weak, and not quite as funny as some of the others. It sort of ties into something that happened in the first story, but it stands on its own, as well.


All in all, it was just an okay collection of stories. There are some good one-liners that made me laugh, and the illustrations are really cute (they're probably the best part of the whole book). I don't think I'd recommend this one to adults the way I might recommend some other children's books, but for kids themselves, it's solid and fairly well written.

Quotable moment:

Benny looked over at Bigfoot.

"You don't have a nose," said Benny. "How do you smell?"

"Terrible," replied Bigfoot.

"I see," said Benny. "Well, that's a relief. I thought the baloney sandwich had gone bad."

Overall: 2.9 out of 5

Review - Dream Me

Dream Me
by Kathryn Berla
Date: 2017
Publisher: Amberjack Publishing
Reading level: YA
Book type: prose novel
Pages: 270
Format: e-book
Source: Amazon.ca

Every night Babe dreams of a boy she’s never met before named Zat. But Zat is no ordinary daydream. He’s actually a human from the distant future, who has travelled back in time to be with Babe in the only way that he can be—in her dreams. But the dreams leave Babe more and more tired and pained each morning. Zat is determined to help her, even if it means never sharing dreams with her again.

(synopsis from Goodreads)

WARNING: This review will contain spoilers. If you want to read a version with the spoilers hidden, head on over to Goodreads and read it there.

I feel insulted. After 270 pages of implausibility sprinkled with what I can only describe as mansplaining, I'm miffed. No, I'm downright annoyed.

If this book had lived up to its synopsis, that would be one thing. But it didn't. It failed. Boy, did it fail! Where do I even begin?

To begin with, the premise of a far-future human coming back to inhabit the dreams of a present-day teenage girl is a bit far-fetched. If you're going to try to pull that off, you need to do more than... well, this. Zat is not just "a human from the distant future". In fact, I wouldn't even call him a human at all. He's some sort of reptilian creature who's evolved from humans. That would take a long time, right? Right. Zat comes from five billion years in the future. The Earth is devoid of trees (it's never explained how anything lives without oxygen), the "humans" sleep all day so they don't use up too many resources, and... well, I can't really explain much more about that future because the world-building was stupendously weak. Aside from the fact that their houses are like cubes and there are vipers lurking in the dark, we don't know much about this future world. Except that it's dying because the sun is expanding. People are in a scramble to get off the planet. You'd think that with, you know, five billion years of warning, they wouldn't have left everything to the last minute.

But that's not the only problem with Zat and his part of the story. Instead of getting off the planet with the rest of his family, he decides to go back in time. Time-travel technology was supposedly invented before space travel technology (okay...) and was then abandoned in favour of the latter. One guy tried to travel back in time, and because the results were ambiguous, they abandoned the whole idea. And then Zat decides to try it. He basically stalks Babe for a while before he takes up residence in her dreams. With his body in the future dead, the only way he can exist is in her dream state. She gets headaches when she dreams of him, which of course he feels guilty about (insert suitable YA angst here... even though this is a guy who has access to five billion years of written history, so surely he would've known something like this could happen). Oh, yeah. About that knowledge thing. It's never explained, either. At one point he says that all of humanity's knowledge is "implanted" into them. Babe assumes it's a chip. But it's never explained. How you'd get five billion years' worth of history on an implantable chip is beyond me, but that's what the author decided to go with. Curiously, Zat only seems to read 19th- and 20th-century classics. Wordsworth. Hemingway. I guess we've peaked.

This book might have worked as a short story. All the nonsense about tennis and the pervert at the country club could've been cut. It didn't add anything to the plot. In fact, it took away from the main plot. When I read a book with sci-fi or fantasy elements like this, I don't want to spend the majority of the book hobbling through descriptions of the weather or what the characters are eating.

Then there are the characters. The book begins with Zat, so you'd assume he's a main character. Despite being a point-of-view character, he's not really a main character at all. The main character is Babe, whose parents named her after some female golfer, perhaps not realizing that naming your child after a term of endearment is infantilizing. When Babe, a modern-day teenager, mentioned a peer named Marvin, I threw up my hands in despair. How hard is it to look up popular baby names for the year 2000? I can pretty much guarantee that "Marvin" won't be on any of those lists.

Babe is one of the most insufferable characters I've read in a while. She's got this reverse snobbery thing going on, where she looks down at people who have more money or status and automatically assumes they're bad people. It was so blatant that I was hoping it would be addressed at some point. She continually judged a girl named Mattie Lynn, pegging her as a queen bee (and possibly a mean girl), when there was nothing to really give that impression. All I got out of Mattie Lynn was an overachiever who perhaps didn't recognize her privilege, but who wasn't necessarily cruel. Babe comes across as someone who whines and views herself as misunderstood... and yet she's constantly making the same snap judgments about others that she presumably doesn't want made about her. In short, she's kind of a hypocrite.

The writing in this book was just terrible. The grammar was off. The dialogue punctuation was wrong more than half the time. The tenses were weird. The book has three different points of view: Zat, Babe, and Babe's blog. Babe's blog is weird in that it's written in the present tense, while her "live" sections are written in the past tense. One of the commenters on her blog pointed this out, and she just dismissed it. (I almost got the feeling that an editor pointed this out to the author and, being too lazy to change it, she just tried to make it appear like a stylistic choice.) The prose veered into shades of purple at times, leading to some unintentionally funny descriptions of gelatinous skin and "creamy brown" hair. And, like I mentioned before, there was this condescending tone that crept in at times. Certain things that didn't need to be explained were mansplained to death. Babe herself takes things very literally at times, leading to some stupidity. (She ponders the meaning of terms like "fire ant", "sleepy town", and "vixen", wondering about miniature fire-breathing dragons, a town where everyone sleeps a lot, and an actual fox, respectively. Did I mention that this girl with her stunning vocabulary wants to be a writer?) And then there are things that are not explained at all, that the author assumes all readers will understand, like tennis terms.

Ultimately, though, this was just unsatisfying. The ending is pat and unexplained. Where did the real Zat come from? Did he take over someone's body? Did his soul/energy become solid? Did Earl have a magic camera that took his photo and shot his body out like an instant Polaroid? We never find out the identities of the mysterious blog commenters like Sweetness (they were written to sound relevant to the story... but I guess they weren't). Babe comes across as a dull, stupid girl, and I couldn't care about her or her "problems" (Perry? Why should I care about this non-boyfriend?) at all.

I expect this sort of thing from self-published books, but this wasn't. I guess I need to be careful about small indie presses, too. All around, a disappointment and a waste of time. Now I know why so many people on Goodreads DNFed this one!

For a book with a somewhat similar premise but a far better execution, try Corinne Duyvis's Otherbound instead. (Keep in mind that I only gave that book 2 stars; the fact that I'm recommending a 2-star book at all should tell you how bad I thought Dream Me was.)

Quotable moment:

It's that special peaceful time just before sunset, when day and night reach equilibrium and the world stops to exhale. I'm never up early enough to know if the world inhales before sunrise.

Premise: 2/5
Plot: 0/5
Characters: 1/5
Pace: 1/5
Writing: 1/5
Editing: 0/5
Originality: 1/5
Enjoyment: 1/5

Overall Rating: 0.88 out of 5 ladybugs

Top Ten Tuesday - Ten Books I Wish We'd Read in School

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

This week's topic is a freebie with a back-to-school theme. I spent a lot of time in high school lamenting the books we had to read, and even more time afterward thinking, "Why couldn't we have read this instead?" (The answer was probably, "Because it's too feminine." We girls had to suck it up and read books about guys having adventures, and about other guys getting their dicks blown off--ahem, Hemingway--but god forbid any of the boys had to read about a girl who didn't get raped, wasn't an adulteress, didn't get murdered... You get the idea.) So here are ten books that I wish we could've read... instead of what we actually did read:

Ten Books I Wish We'd Read in School:

Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery - I went to school in Canada for all but two years of my education... and yet, we never read one of the most well-known Canadian titles of all time!

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by J. K. Rowling - Now, I'll be the first person to say that these books are not exactly great literature. However, the stories in the first few were fun, and they would've gone a long way to encouraging reluctant readers to read. Unfortunately, I was out of school by the time the first one was even published. (I also would've loved to see the backlash our conservative area would've kicked up; I'm sure it would've been rather hilarious. Witchcraft! Oh noes!)

The House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer - Actually, many of Nancy Farmer's books--especially those set in Africa--might be great in the classroom. But this one is so interesting as a sci-fi/dystopian story in a not-quite-familiar future with a main character who was born purely to be used by others. There are lots of interesting discussions that could be had about this book.

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith - One of my favourite novels of all time seems like it would be a good fit in a high school curriculum. The fact that it's a coming-of-age story about girls is probably the reason it's not used.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë - I got a chance to read this in university. I don't know why it wasn't part of the high school curriculum. It's got mystery, secrets, and plenty of archaic social customs to discuss. Isn't that what English teachers love?

Kindred by Octavia E. Butler - This book could've been a great tie-in to learning about slavery in the United States. It reminded me a bit of The Time Traveler's Wife... but with much higher stakes.

Matilda by Roald Dahl - Actually, pretty much any of Dahl's books would've been fun to read, but Matilda is one of my favourites. It's about a bookworm. How can you not love that? (Plus, comparing your own principal to the Trunchbull would make any school despot look like a benevolent ruler.)

Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare - I had to read A Midsummer Night's Dream, Julius Caesar, and Hamlet in school. Of course, after that, I thought I hated Shakespeare. I read Much Ado About Nothing on my own a year or so after high school, and I loved it. I found it way more accessible, and it has some great lines and insults.

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen - Maybe some schools put this classic on their reading lists, but mine didn't. We really didn't read a lot of female authors at all. (Sense and Sensibility would've also been a nice one to read, but it probably reads too much like a straight romance for the classroom.)

Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder - I found this book to be so interesting (but I'm a bit of a nerd). What might read like a dry textbook in the hands of another author was turned into an engaging story by Gaarder. I learned so much about philosophy and its history as I read this book... while also being entertained.

What are some books you wish you could've read in school?

Top Ten Tuesday - Ten Book Recommendations for Adults Who Read Young

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

This week's topic is Ten Book Recommendations for _________. I'm going to go with books for younger readers that I think adults might also enjoy. I'm an adult myself, and I don't read a lot of books that are aimed at my age; I read mostly young adult books, with a few middle grade titles thrown into the mix. There are some real gems out there, if you don't mind the main character being a bit (or a lot) younger than you. Since many young adult books are already well known, I'm going to stick with middle grade titles here:

Ten Books for Adults Who Read Young:

Charlotte Sometimes by Penelope Farmer - Don't let Goodreads's series numbering deter you. Despite being the third in a series, you don't need to have read the first two to enjoy this one. It's a fun time-travel story with great characters that takes place in England.

Coraline by Neil Gaiman - I read the book long before I saw the movie, and I still prefer the book. It's creepier than the movie, and a bit darker, which might make it even more appealing to older readers.

Flora & Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures by Kate DiCamillo - This is a great example of a book for young readers that doesn't talk down to them. The typing squirrel is delightful, and the whole thing has a sort of superhero/comic-book vibe to it, which may appeal to older readers as well.

Liesel & Po by Lauren Oliver - This one makes me think of Dickens... lite. The Victorian-esque setting is populated by some unforgettable characters... including two of the cutest ghosts you'll ever read about.

Listen, Slowly by Thanhha Lai - The subject matter in this one may be creeping up there, age-wise, but the narrator is still only thirteen. Her summer in Vietnam is full of humour, heartache, and growing pains. I haven't been let down by this author yet!

Peter and the Starcatchers by Dave Barry & Ridley Pearson - Admittedly, I haven't read a ton of Peter Pan retellings. This book is more of a prequel, anyway, but it's one of the best books I've read that incorporates these characters and the world of Neverland. Don't go in expecting to meet Wendy and her brothers, though; this book takes place long before any of that.

Pictures of Hollis Woods by Patricia Reilly Giff - I saw the TV movie adaptation of this story before I read the book. It presents a touching story of a foster kid who's just looking for her place in the world.

Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt - This is an oldie, but it's still good. The questions about immortality and friendship are timeless.

The Two Princesses of Bamarre by Gail Carson Levine - Most people have heard of Ella Enchanted by the same author, but not as many have heard of this story, which is actually my favourite of the author's books. The cast of characters is wonderful, and it's nice to see a fairytale story that focuses on sisters and doesn't rely on a prince to save the day.

The Wide-Awake Princess by E. D. Baker - Speaking of fairytales, this is one of my favourite retellings. While it's based around the "Sleeping Beauty" story, it incorporates plenty of other tales. It's funny and cute. I haven't gotten to around to reading the other books in the series yet, but if they're as good as this one, I probably won't be disappointed.

What are some books for younger readers that you think adults would also enjoy?

Review - If I Wake

If I Wake
by Nikki Moyes
Date: 2016
Publisher: Inspiring Publishers
Reading level: YA
Book type: prose novel
Pages: 276
Format: e-book
Source: Amazon.ca

Will is sixteen year old Lucy’s best friend. Their lives intersect in dreams, where destiny pulls them together through different times in history. Even though their meetings are more real to Lucy than the present, Lucy is uncertain if Will exists outside her mind.
Lucy’s mum thinks there is something wrong when Lucy sleeps for days at a time.
She is so caught up with finding a cure she doesn’t see the real problem. Lucy is bullied at school and is thinking of ending her life.
When the bullying goes too far and Lucy ends up in a coma, only Will can reach her. But how do you live when the only person who can save you doesn’t exist?

(synopsis from Goodreads)

WARNING: This review will contain spoilers. If you want to read a version with the spoilers hidden, head on over to Goodreads and read it there.

I know it might not seem like it from the way I rate and review books, but I don't actually go into any book thinking I'm going to dislike it. The synopsis and premise are usually what'll spur me to pick up a book, and that was the case here. I was intrigued by the "dream friend" aspect of the story, and hoped that it would provide an interesting backdrop for exploring the themes of bullying and suicide. Unfortunately, it did not; I found the book to be problematic and potentially dangerous.

I wish there had been more critical reviews of this book on Goodreads so I would've known what I was getting myself into. Aside from some low ratings, there were (at the time of my reading of the book) no critical reviews. After posting some of my initial thoughts in my Goodreads status updates and receiving ad hominem attacks (ironic, considering one of the messages of this book is about being kind because you don't know what another person is going through in their life), I wondered if perhaps I wasn't the only one who'd been harassed for not liking this. In any case, here's the sort of review that I wish I had seen before I decided to pick up this book. I might've saved myself some grief.

Going in, I felt the premise had some merit, so I was almost immediately frustrated by the poor quality of the writing. If a book is just bad all around, with a stupid plot and lousy characters from the beginning, I won't care so much. But when there's a glimmer of something, some spark of potential, it's really sad when it doesn't work out. Even worse is when that spark gets obliterated by bad creative choices and the urge to send a preachy message.

I had problems right away, but I was willing to overlook them and see where the story would take me. From the start, I was confused. The book is written almost entirely in the present tense, even though it incorporates recent flashbacks, ancient flashbacks, and even a flash forward. At times, the narrative jumps between these times quite rapidly, making it difficult to tell where and when the main character is. Adding to my confusion is the fact that Lucy (the narrator) starts out the story referring to herself in the third person. I guess the author wanted to start the story with an air of mystery, but all it did was confuse me, and since the third-person perspective wasn't repeated again, it came off as little more than a cheap trick.

I didn't understand what was going on in the story with Lucy and Will, and I'm still not entirely sure. Lucy may have been some sort of hologram. She went back into the past to interact with Will, staying until she died... at which point, her body there would vanish and she'd wake up back in her own time. I can work with that. Will, on the other hand, made no sense. For a while, I thought he was reincarnating over and over... and yet, that theory went out the window in the later part of the book. See, Will shows up in all these different time periods. His name is usually a variation on "Will" and he looks similar enough in all of his incarnations that Lucy always recognizes him. But as we get to the end of the book (in a sudden switch to dystopian sci-fi at almost 3/4 of the way through), we're introduced to Willis... who's the grandson of Will... who's the great-grandson of Bill. And Lucy actually meets Bill in real time when he's an old man. So the Will who saves her from finally killing herself can't be the same one she was with in all those other time periods because he exists in the same time period as one of them. Confused yet? (And, yes, she's saved from killing herself by a boy. And then everything in her life magically gets better. Just like in real life, right?)

I've read stories with a similar fantasy premise before (see below), so I thought I knew what I was getting into. But this was just so badly done that... Well, let's see. Lucy supposedly went into a coma every year on her birthday (since age 11) and met with Will in the past. The thing is, we're only told about the instances at ages 11, 13, and 16. There was another brief one in England that the author seemed to have forgotten about, and the other missing instances were mentioned later (in one sentence). I thought this part of the story could've been fleshed out a little more. There was an awful lot of glossing over, including where Lucy apparently almost drowned in her bathtub and got pneumonia... but the only reason we even know about that is because she tells us (again, in one sentence). I found it really difficult to care about the characters because everything was so detached and unemotional. Reading the synopsis, I'd expected this to be a romance. But, aside from one kiss, there was little else. The characters didn't even have any chemistry. It's not entirely surprising, though, since Lucy was one of the weakest characters I've read in a while. She's defined almost entirely by her victimhood. The Wills are likewise bland. They exist seemingly to be there for Lucy and smile at her and... well, I don't really know what else. The villains are all ridiculously evil; there are no shades of grey. And that makes it all the more unrealistic when, at the end, Lucy becomes best friends with two of them.

Early on, Lucy made a comment about her suicide attempt that threw up a great big red flag. I kept it in mind, but waited to see if she would come around and not be so... well, stupid:

I did this to make her and her friends pay for their continued abuse - and to stop the endless emotional pain.

Deciding to commit suicide to punish a bully. Sounds healthy, right? (If someone is horrible enough to push you in front of a truck, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that they're probably not going to feel that bad if you commit suicide.) In the end, though, Lucy never really realized this was wrong, and even more ridiculous was the fact that "this" wasn't even an actual suicide attempt. Lucy's coma in the beginning of the book was caused by her bully pushing her in front of an oncoming truck. (Lucy takes credit for this, though, implying that this was actually a suicide attempt because she let it happen. Okay...)

I have so many problems with this aspect of the story. Lucy's life was absolute hell... to the point of it being completely unrealistic. At times, I wondered if her real life was another one of the dreams, since it seemed to be something out of The Twilight Zone. Her school was like an asylum populated by psychopaths. Everyone was cruel for no reason. The teachers were clueless, and kind of cruel themselves. (In one instance, one of the bullies shoved Lucy outside a grocery store, causing her to drop and break a bottle and then cut her hand on the glass. This was in front of the bully's father, who just stared at the bleeding, crying Lucy "like [she was] a stain on his carpet" and walked away. Then all the passers-by ignored her as well.) Lucy's mother was ridiculous. She obviously couldn't read people--even her own daughter's tears didn't seem to faze her--and she appeared to have no empathy at all. She didn't date anyone for sixteen years, and then she took up with a walking plot device named Frank, a lovely specimen who continually smirked at Lucy, groped her mother in front of her, whispered things like, "No one wants you. You're good for nothing. Do us all a favour; stop hanging around and just die," and even kicked a feeble old man in a wheelchair. (Yeah... we get it. Frank's a bad dude.) When Lucy finally makes a friend, said friend kills herself. Because... why not? Let's make Lucy's life even more unrealistically hellish. Then there was the amusing (if it weren't so disturbing) talk with the school counsellor after the friend's suicide:

"How did she die?" The words leave my mouth without me realising I moved my lips.
...
"That's not important," she says.
...
"She killed herself," I say. It's not a question. I've never felt so alone in my life.
"We don't talk about things like that!" the counsellor gasps.

The problem is that this pretty much negates what's in the author's note. If you're feeling suicidal, talk to someone: a friend, a family member, a psychiatrist, a counsellor. Right... Like Lucy's school counsellor who doesn't even want to talk about suicide? What is she there for, then?

Aside from the disturbing lack of care the suicide angle was handled with, this book was just poorly written. It was in dire need of a good editor. No, scratch that. Any editor. There were comma splices everywhere... and then where there should've been commas, there weren't any. There were plenty of misspellings, too, and some words that were just plain wrong (including one rather amusing use of "extract" where the author meant "extricate"). Some things weren't explained (like how Bill, an American, suddenly appeared in Australia with his whole family just in time to save Lucy). The comas were medically ridiculous. (At one point, someone mentions organ donation, and Frank wants life support switched off. As far as I could tell, there was no life support. Maybe Frank is one of those people who thinks "pulling the plug" means simply switching off the heart monitor.) The book comes across as self-published, though I'm not sure if it is or not (the publisher has a self-publishing division). In any case, the writing is juvenile, weak, and riddled with errors. Reading this was an exhausting task.

All in all, I wouldn't recommend this one, either for the fantasy aspect or for the suicide/bullying theme. For some better books with the "dream friend", reincarnation, or time travel premises, have a look at these:

Charlotte Sometimes by Penelope Farmer
Dream Boy by Mary Crockett & Madelyn Rosenberg
Marianne Dreams by Catherine Storr
Reincarnation by Suzanne Weyn

Quotable moment:

I am Lucy.

My body lies on the hospital bed being watched over by Mum. My mind has left the room and I'm in Will's world one final time. Sometimes I'm called back into the hospital room, although I don't know why. It's never happened before, but then this is the first time I've ever tried to kill myself.

Occasionally I wonder what would happen, if I wake.

Premise: 2/5
Plot: 1/5
Characters: 1/5
Pace: 1/5
Writing: 2/5
Editing: 0/5
Originality: 2/5
Enjoyment: 1/5

Overall Rating: 1.25 out of 5 ladybugs