Title: Untraceable
Author: S.R. Johannes
Publisher: Coleman & Stott
Rating: WARTY!
DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration of any kind for this review. Since this is a new novel, this review is shorter so as not to rob the writer of her story, but even so, it will probably still be more detailed than you'll typically find elsewhere!
I'm ½-way through this one, which is the first volume in The Nature of Grace series, and I have to say that I'm not very impressed. The premise is a good one, but the execution leaves everything to be desired. There are related novels which I flatly refuse to entertain based on what I've read so far: Unspeakable is either another novel in this world, or it's a very à propos one-word review of Untraceable; Uncontrollable is without question a fair description of the little jerk of a protagonist in Untraceable.
Grace Wells's father has disappeared. He's a park ranger and he's been gone for three months and no one knows what happened to him. Since his radio was found in the river, the assumption is that he drowned, but there's no evidence that anyone has ever scoured the river for him! The police are telling Grace that it's the responsibility of the Park Ranger service, which is about to drop the case. Grace is scouring the woods herself using field-craft that she learned at her father's side, but everything she does is pointless because it's been three months and a few rain storms in the meantime, and any meaningful tracks or trails are long gone.
For a story that's supposed to be centered on a female protagonist, I found it inexplicable that every animal she encounters out in the forest is identified as a 'he'! A cricket, a squirrel, a snake, a rainbow trout (which is slimy by the way, in case we aren't yet girlish enough for you!) are all firmly male with not a suggestion of a female creature in sight. How do these creatures breed out here?! Or are the females of the species staying at home doing the housework? I found that level of genderism appalling in a female-centric novel, and it's an entirely predictable betrayal of the very basis of the novel. Sadly, it's not the only one.
Grace is so pathetically desperate that when she finds a Cheetos bag, she begs the police captain - an old family friend - to dust it for prints because her father ate Cheetos! This says more about how illogical the story is than it does about Grace, however, since she is now effectively telling everyone that her father the Park ranger was a complete slob, who trashed up the very park he was supposed to help maintain! Even if there were his prints on the bag, what would it prove? If this were merely a sign that her therapy isn't cuyting it, that would be one thing, but it turns out that it's not. It's actually a sign that Grace is a stupid, spoiled brat who has no clue as to the meaning of the term 'boundaries' or that of 'decent behavior'. She exhibits increasing stupidity as the story continues, starting with stealing the file on her father from the police captain's office!
On a trip into the forest, we're immediately subjected to the beginnings of a tired, tired, tired cliché of the inevitable young-adult love triangle. There's the standard bad-ass newcomer whom she meets in the forest and with whom she inescapably falls into inescapable instadore, contrasted with the faithful, devoted, good-natured moron whom she abruptly ditched, but who will do anything for her and who consequently, she abuses criminally (I use that word avisedly). Grace is a heartless user, and she deserves no consideration or respect IMO.
She happens to very conveniently overhear two guys talking like they're going bear-hunting out of season, and since we've had it bitch-slapped into our heads that Grace loves bears, she's naturally loaded for bear at hearing this! Pop quiz! So having heard this news about the hunters, Grace now decides that the best thing is to:
- Alert the rangers and police, OR
- Leave her employer in the lurch by running out on her after-lunch shift, follow these bad guys alone into the deep forest without telling anyone what she's up to, and thereby risk getting herself kidnapped and/or killed?
Which do you think she does? You got it right! And what do you think happens? Yep! Got it in one! And who do you think rescues her from these clichéd caricatures of dumb red-neck brutes into whose evil arms she falls so helplessly? Yep, it's the mysterious bad-ass guy in the forest - you got it right again! So now we learn that this young woman for whom we're supposed to root is not only wilting like an unwatered wallflower, but is also stupid squared. She has a cell phone but never once does she call in where she's going or that she might be in trouble with two poachers, or that she's escaped from two poachers and someone from the Ranger's office needs to come pick them up.
At one point, while she and her rescuer (no word yet on whether his hair falls into his eyes, but he does have recognizable muscle mass) are sheltering in a cave from the conveniently pouring rain which our field-crafter never saw coming (or if she did, she sure kept quiet about it), she actually has this thought: "Maybe it can't hurt to give this guy a chance. Drilling him is much better than being grilled about my encounter."! I did not make that up! She would rather drill him than be grilled! I'm sure that's not what the author intended me to imagine, but it is what she achieved!
Nor did I make up this one which appears a bit later: "Just as I'm about to give up, something nibbles at my fly. Breathing evenly, I do a quick jerk..." Yeah, she's talking about fishing, but there are better ways of writing these things, and if your story is in danger of going over a cliff, you definitely don't need to pile on any more baggage with sloppy syntax or idly composed prose that might tip an already precarious balance in your reader's mind! This guy Mo, the bad-ass savior of Grace, has never harmed her or even looked like he would, and now he's actually saved her life, yet she's having more qualms about him than she did about blindly following two nasty guys into the forest by herself! Honestly? Now she gets all cautious?! Maybe Grace is short for graceless?
I'm sorry, but novels like this, if this is all they have to offer, need to be sold with a free barf bag attached. I was hoping that the other half of this story would be a lot better than the first one, but it seems not. Grace is still doing monumentally dumb things. When she gets back to town, she fails to tell the police of the fact that she was held hostage by people whom she actually considers might have something to do with her dad's disappearance! Yeah, just let 'em run wild, graceless! Instead she goes directly home without even a care for whether someone might be following her. When Les the Ranger shows up, she does tell him, and he goes off after the bad guys Al and Billy, telling Grace to wait at home. Pop quiz! So having been told by a Park Ranger to stay home Grace now decides that the best thing is to:
- Stay home as instructed, OR
- Promptly heads into the forest without telling a sole where you're going?
Right again! I think Grace might actually have taken the lead from Luce (of Lauren Kate's abysmal Fallen novel) for being the dumbest cluck in the hen-house. The only conclusion I can draw from all this is that the title of this novel refers to Grace's functional neurons.
So predictably, Mo finds her again - what a stalker he must be to always be there when she is! But unlike her behavior with the bad boys Al and Billy, she takes Mo down hard before she realizes who he is. She she can put him down but no one else? Is that the basis of her attraction to him?! Or maybe the basis is the fact that Mo is creepy enough to sneak up on her after all she's been through and not even have the decency to offer a word of greeting on his approach? I skipped an entire chapter at this point because I was in danger of going into a diabetic coma from reading it. The chapters are all titled "Survival Skill #" whatever, and 18 was nothing but Grace flirting cheesily with Mo instead of searching for her dad. I guess she soon dropped that old geezer from her consciousness
"Survival Skill #19" has her unaccountably freaking out over the sound of what might have been gunfire in an area where hunting is regularly going on! Of course it might have been an engine back-firing, but she denies that with a "No way!" when she's ridden her motorbike up there frequently, and she's also followed a truck up there. This makes zero sense. Instead of fearing for the life of Les, whom she sent out here to find those guys, she goes into a panic for herself, and starts running! Mo physically restrains her and demands to know what she's hiding! This is the girl he had to rescue from two deranged guys and he's too stupid to grasp why she might have panicked? She tells him her dad has been missing for "three months, eleven days, twelve hours, and forty three minutes" even though she cannot possibly have it down to the minute or even the hour. No one can.
Brain-dead and graceless fails yet again when Les reveals he has actually brought in Al and Billy. How he managed that when both of them are violent, armed, and have no scruples, is only addressed later and obtusely, but what's a far bigger fail is that all graceless now has to do is accuse them of kidnapping her, and they're in custody for a long time, yet she fails to do so! Instead she goes haring off on some wild-ass chase based on the soda can that Les was drinking from! I want to ditch this novel and move on to something better because I'm now forced to consider that it might be a children's novel and not YA at all.
The only thing actualyl retaining my interest right now is that I'd thought Les would end up getting killed, but since he didn’t, I'm seriously considering that the real villain is Les - or maybe even Mo which would be a pleasant change, but I can't see that happening. So Grace hikes for two hours (wihout telling anyone where she's going, to get to this station based on Les's soda can, and she becomes immediately suspicious when she arrives there, but instead of using her cell phone to call for help, she takes out her knife and lies in wait. This girl is stupid, stupid, stupid, even as she tells herself that this time she needs to be smarter. Snooping around, she finds the station trashed, and a dead bear, hunted illegally, but she does not call it in and she takes zero evidence, not even photos with her phone. Stupid, stupid, stupid. This is definitely a children's story and was therefore pitched to me under false pretenses!
Grace goes back to town and meets with the police captain, but then spends two pages without telling him what the critical problem is, bantering with Wyn instead! When Carl the captain finally drags it out of her that there's a dead bear, he asks her "Are you sure?"! Honestly? Are you kidding me? Maybe it was a dead bee? What could you mistake a dead bear for? Maybe it was an old rug someone tossed out?! But of course since Grace is stupid, stupid, stupid, and incompetent, and didn’t call it in, nor procure evidence, nor take photos, then she has nothing to offer them, and even if she did have evidence, it's not evidence that Al or Billy, or Les had anything to do with it.
Wyn offers to help her but she lies to him, failing to mention Mo. So now Grace is a liar and a jerk, and we’re supposed to root for her? At this point I'm thinking she deserves everything she gets, including a dressing down from Carl for trying to tell him how to do his job. Wyn offers to go the station and get pictures of the dead bear (assuming it was a bear, remember, Grace might have mistaken an old discarded winter coat for a dead bear). Grace immediately forgets how upset and frustrated she is and starts shamelessly flirting with Wyn, which probably accounts for his shameless manhandling of her, with his hands all over her inappropriately and she never raises an objection.
When they arrive at the station, the place is all cleaned up, and the dead bear is gone! Clearly Al and Billy are innocent (at least of the clean-up), but this doesn’t register with Grace, who decides to Google them! She goes out to meet Mo at the river the next day -the hell with continuing her search for her lost father, over which she's been obsessing for months. Who cares about a missing dad when you can squeeze Mister Hottie in the forest with a phishing rod? Naw, it’s much more important to flirt with Mo, who is supposed to be British but uses Americanisms just like a native.
He describes her as a cute girl, and far from being insulted, she shows as little upset from this as she does when he demeans her with 'blossom'. On the contrary, her face heats up and she builds a totally unnecessary fire, apparently just from the heat of her face. When the fire gets going, sparks "twitter" from it! I did not make that up! Twitter! Yep, there's probably a hash tag floating around. Look for #St.iMental.fire. Clearly this is not instadore! This is surely an original Native American Brand True Love™! I mean, get this: "His mouth attack mine with such force that my lips forget to fight back." Yep - demeaning Native American pigeon English! I suppose it’s a typo - that the 's' was missed from the end of 'attacks' but seriously, with the way this scene is going, I wouldn’t at all have been surprised if that sentence had been followed up with something like, "Me Mo. You squaw. Me make heap big love to you in my tipi." So much for the strong female protagonist. Goodbye, graceless, hello Mary Sue! Or maybe we should use a more condescending Native American cliché like 'Dances With Dumbass"?
So Mary Sue goes to Mama Sue for advice on the photos of boot prints she has, and despite not having a single thing by which to judge the size of the prints, Mama Sue nails them down to a size 10 and a size 11. She must be a truly remarkable woman. Mary Sue makes the super-human leap to the astounding conclusion that the smaller boot is Billy's and the larger is Al's. So another day when she could be searching her grid for her dad is blown off to have fun with Mo. How easily she's distracted. Dances With Dumbass make me heap sick. She spends the night with Mo, without calling anyone to let them know where she is. She has a bad dream but eventually she can fall asleep with Mo's arms encircling her in a Mo Original Ring of Safety™. Sigh.
Her mom freaks out when she gets home the next morning and Mary Sue Grace (MSG) offers neither a word of apology nor of explanation. Far from it. She treats her own mother like crap. Her mother complains that she missed her psych session yesterday and MSG declares arrogantly that she will pay for it, since she's a working girl, but guess what? Since at this point, she's not worked throughout this entire novel except for one shift which she blew off at lunchtime, she's hardly working in any meaningful sense, now is she? So her Mom grounds her, but Wyn shows up, and this shameless 16 year old starts kissing him. It must be the power of Wyn telling her that he wants to think for both of them! I am not kidding: that's exactly what he said!
I'm sorry, but I'm outta here. This novel sucks rotten wood like a forest fire. I have better things to read with my time. This is a definite WARTY!
