When I saw that this book was blurbed “in the vein of ‘Bunny’ and ‘Convenience Store Woman,’” I immediately, without a second thought, pre-ordered it. Both of those titles are some of my favorite books, and this sounded extremely up my alley. Unfortunately, I feel as though I’ve fallen for a misleading marketing tactic.
This one disappointed me. It wasn’t written well and the story felt incongruent to the characters. I found a couple of syntax errors near the beginning which immediately left a bad taste in my mouth and, as I crossed the 50 page mark, I kept having to refer back to the cover and blurb to make sure I hadn’t bought the wrong book.
It’s worth noting that this book feels young adult, not adult, despite its retail label. It is young adult in writing, tone, and content, and the only adult part of it is really the age of our main character, Vi, who is in her early twenties and, therefore, dealing with early twenties issues, but it is all laid out and conveyed in a juvenile manner. (YA is phenomenal, but because this is marketed so differently it feels unexpected.)
Vi is the female version of Goob from Disney’s “Meet the Robinsons.” If you know you know. She’s a “boo-hoo me” character who treats everyone around her terribly with no tangible reasons behind her actions, while everyone around her is treating her perfectly normal. God knows I love unlikable main characters, but Vi is so two-dimensional that she’s just unlikable, that’s about it, and when her attempted redemption occurs in the end, it doesn’t feel like it’s paying off but rather materializing artificially.
The book has this air of “aiming to be lit-fic but halting at fic, with a prose that relies on balancing between action (filled with “as I did this,” “as he moved there”) and flashbacks that feel out of place until the author forces its connection into the current narrative. Sometimes we switch back and forth between being in a present-time scene and being in a flashback, all within the same, tightly-contained moment. We are given too much freedom, for the story lacks a clear angle that is congruent. It doesn't matter if the blob has no explanation, but because we move so aimlessly, it's inevitable to wonder what this blob even is; if the story squeezed its purpose through a funnel, there wouldn't be space to wonder, but alas.
It also feels like a very long short story. Random little characters are introduced near the climax of the story wholly to add tension, due to the story’s lack of clarity. Bob as a character has the potential to be very fascinating and, instead, comes off as under-explored and, quite frankly, boring. Vi’s family is written out to be intolerant of Vi yet they’re all just really nice and normal, including Alex, so Vi’s actions come off as unnecessarily harsh.
Every character acts in aid of the story, as opposed to individually. They all say things that will inevitably affect Vi, they all act around Vi, they all move according to Vi, and this all inevitably yet artificially pushes the story forward. Vi’s actions aren’t prompted by her character, but rather by the author’s attempt to push the plot forward and make it more “chaotic” by creating unnatural tension. The tale is a muddle of "and then this happened, and then this happened, then this..." without any intention, it is leading to nowhere. Nothing near the end makes sense narratively, and the final scene feels like a comedy skit with no payoff.