Wilson Mather-Glass
Ms. Romaniuk
Reading l.A. Book Review 3
18 October 2010
Wrecked:
Drama Without Reason
If tragedy struck in your life, would you whine about it for eternity, or try to get past it? Wrecked, written by E.R. Frank is a slow, melodramatic realistic fiction novel. Anna is a girl whose life is shaped after a traumatic accident. She and her friend Ellen barely survive the crash that takes place in front of Wayne’s house, after leaving a party. However, the other driver wasn’t so lucky. The accident continues to haunt Anna forever, because the other driver was no other then her brother’s girlfriend, Cameron. Anna whines about “how hard her life is” the whole book, to the point where you wish that she was the one that didn’t survive the crash. I would give this book a whopping one star! Wrecked is an unpleasant book because the characters are irritating, the book finds a way to be dramatic without being enthralling, and the book is filled with flashbacks that barely connect to the story.
Wrecked is an unpleasant read because the characters (especially Anna), are quite irritating. As you might’ve guessed, it’s not very interesting listening to a character moan about her problems over and over again. It seems like everyone in the book had moved past Cameron’s death except for Anna. Anna tries to bring up the accident about two-thirds through the read. Jack simply states, “Anna you’re honestly the only who still hasn’t moved past her death.” And it’s true. It seems like almost every character had gotten over Cameron’s death, except for her.
Another way that Wrecked is an unpleasant read is that it somehow finds a way to be dramatic, without being enthralling. If you haven’t gotten the hint by now, Anna is a very dramatic character. If dramatic isn’t over-exaggerating how hard your life is, I don’t know what is. When asked what is wrong, because it is very clear that something is, Anna always resolves to, “Everything”, even if it is many months past the actual accident and her life is fine. These are the parts in the book where you are inclined to roll your eyes or even abandon the book.
One more thing that I couldn’t stand about the book was the countless number of irrelevant flashbacks. At different points in the book, Anna would flashback to something that happened involving her and her brother from earlier years. When Anna’s family goes on a trip to the ocean, Anna asks her brother if there are any riptides. She then has a flashback to a time where they went in the water and her dad almost drowned because of the riptides. This seven page side note left me very confused, for it did not relate to the story in any way.
So, as you can see, Wrecked is an unpleasant book because the characters are irritating, the book finds a way to be dramatic without being enthralling, and the book is filled with flashbacks that barely connect to the story. My only example in this my life that somehow relates to this book, is that I know people who talk about how hard their life is, even though they have it easy. This book reminds of a crappy pop song where a singer might sing about her hard life, living in Hollywood in a multi-million dollar house. Seriously, that’s how dramatic this book is. I learned from this book that when the back cover starts out by saying, “In the latest dramatic work…” I probably won’t like it.