Stuck in the woods with no flashlight

I don’t like the feeling of being held hostage by a book.

I am not one to abandon ship halfway through, unless it is truly terrible writing.

It frustrates me to no end to feel I’m not reading a book because I want to, or because I’m finding it enjoyable, but rather because I feel I have to know. For this reason, I have been known to finish a multitude of really awful books. Books that other people repeatedly ask me, “Why don’t you just stop reading it?” as I pause to complain out loud. Terrible content? I’ll probably finish it. Wildly offensive? Again, I’ll probably read it. Terrible writing, and totally boring are cardinal sins in my book(s). Perhaps I’m too nosy, but my insatiable curiosity (or sometimes disbelief that the book could get any worse) keeps me forging ahead in all but the most dismal of circumstances.

As an author it is a difficult thing to reveal enough information to keep a reader engaged, while also withholding enough to keep the same reader racing through pages. I mean no one would have read Harry Potter if JK Rowling had opened with “It;s cool guys, Voldermort is dark and twisted due to childhood of neglect. he can’t understand love, which becomes his ultimate undoing. Also Harry and Ginny totally end up doing it.” No one would have stood in line for hours to get their hands on the books. Think about best selling mysteries - Dan Brown (like it or not, he’s  a best seller), Agatha Christie, Gillian Flynn - they all keep us in enough suspense to keep reading, but lull the reader into a false sense of conclusion with various hints and side plots along the way. When done right I will stay up until 3 am to finish a book because I have to know what happens. When done wrong, and it can be done oh so wrong, I feel beholden and held hostage to a mildly grumpy jailer. Reading in short bursts and fits between loud rantings and ravings to Mr. Willoughby, I don’t enjoy a single part of the process. The feeling overwhelms the prose, the plot, and the characters. It causes the reader to lose sight of the forest - trees and all, for tunnel vision of being miserably lost in the woods and needing to get out.

I find myself in this predicament with my current read, and I find it all the more frustrating as the book comes lauded by authors, and book reviewers who I generally like and respect. It almost makes the feeling worse - as if I am too stupid to appreciate the book or I’m missing something bigger picture. At the moment the author continue to allude heavily and frequently to events just prior to the book that clearly have significance for where we are now. The allusions, however, are unfailingly the same on each page and do little to move anything forward, or provide much perspective.

The book is young adult fiction, and a romance, although one that deals with more than just the tribulations of falling in love at 16. The young woman appears to be struggling with family abuse and perhaps some abandonment. The novel unfolds alternating in perspective between the star crossed lovers (yes, I’m being deliberately withholding. To prove a point, and because I’m only 43 pages in and plan to do a full review) as they set out into their junior year of high school. Both misfits, and drawn together by circumstance - I am both intrigued and have high hopes for where the narrative will go. For now I remain in a Sisyphean nightmare of fervid reading and ranting until I can get some traction to find my way out of the woods.