Laura Laughlin’s Reviews > Escape! > Status Update

For as much as I have bitched about Stephen Fishbach’s prose style, this book has become enrapturing in its third act. Bah humbug…I like it…it’s like he woke up for part three and remembered he went to Yale.

Prominent character is becoming addicted to amphetamines. Weirdly my favorite thing about the book. I’m like omgggg I know what that’s like lowkey

So. In the middle of a page, forty percent through the book, Stephen Fishbach decides he would like to tell this story in third-person omniscient?…in a chapter titled “Miriam”, he gets tired of Miriam’s perspective and switches to Kent’s…was this originally published on Wattpad? What the fuck is going on? YOU HAVE AN MFA IN FICTION

This is such an interesting story, with such infuriating characters. Kent doesn’t know what a fucking dragonfruit is? Beck thinks droppings on her bed are little chocolates? Are we serious?

I can imagine that Stephen Fishbach thought he wrote this book for the widest audience possible. For people who know him from Survivor (like me), and for people who just picked this off the new fiction shelf at Barnes and Noble…what he actually did is write this for no one. I’m hoping to like it more as I go on, but right now I feel patronized every time he explains things I already know…love you still Stephen

Stephen Fishbach went to Yale and still…his prose is not very good…maybe I’ll be alright