Awkward as a 6ft3 14-year-old
Fiction –YA - Fantasy
10 and up 5 and up 317 pages
December 1, 2009
Witch &Wizard #1
As my first James
Patterson book I went into this book with hopes high and great expectations of
the story he had to share with me, but unfortunately things did not go as
smoothly as I expected.
I found myself struggling to get past the constant weird
breaks and put on teenager speak – I felt like they were trying really hard to
be young and hip. Don’t get me wrong I
can really enjoy different viewpoints in a story, and the idea of Whit and
Whitsy being ripped from their normal world into a hellish new reality was kind
of exciting, but the choppiness of these breaks never allowed me to really get
the rhythm of the story. But still I
soldiered on. I would ignore the
awkwardness, because I just knew Patterson had more to offer than I was seeing. The book could still be redeemed
How wrong I was, it never got better!
The characters never gained any depth, the writing
didn’t improve –nothing about it felt organic - and I never really could imagine the places
they visited - the descriptions had no texture.
Worst by the end I didn’t even really care what happened to Whit and
Whitsy. I just wanted to finish the book. I hate feeling that way.
The biggest problem by for me was I never could buy into
it. Don’t get me wrong Sci-Fi/Fantasy is
my bread and butter and I can suspend my disbelief for the most amazing and on
occasion ridiculous things. I mean I
really wanted to believe and immerse myself in another book world, but I
couldn’t.
I put a lot of effort into trying to like this book and
I came to ask myself why. A book like
this shouldn’t take that much effort and with some introspection I realized I
was only doing it because of James Patterson.
I wanted to like him, but in this case Mr. Patterson did not deserve my
efforts.
Overall I give this book two stars. I didn’t hate it, but nor did I really like
it and the rare moments of wit and interesting premise – though in this case
ill applied - did nothing to save it.
Don’t bother to read it!
