The second day of Christmas is dual first-person stories - which SUCK! You know they do. The problem with these stories its that they tick with such metronomic tedium back and forth between the dual-narration - which is nauseatingly often in first person - that they will put a reader to sleep in short order, so as an insomnia aid, they can be invaluable. But for all other purposes, they are utterly useless. It's just another admission by an author that they can't write a competent novel in third person which is how stories have been successfully and powerfully related for eons.
Here is a couple of titles I ditched unread in the last month that suffer from this syndrome:
- The Girl in Between by Laekan Zea Kemp. Love the 'Laekan' - makes you think this author should try their hand at werewolf stories! But seriously, the pointless contents list has nearly every single chapter titled 'Bryn'. There are one or two titled 'Roman' and some inexplicably, with nothing save a period serving as the 'title'. I ditched this novel based purely on that idiotic chapter listing. I didn't even need to look at the first chapter because I knew this was a first person calamity! Sure enough, when I checked for this review, it was! The very second paragraph read: "I saw his face, lashes tangled over blue lids, his lips parted against the sand. The breeze rippled off his clothes, ocean peeling from his face and ripping onto my hands. I was steeled there...." But the very next paragraph begins: "My hands trembled...." So is she steeled or trembling? I can't figure it out. But more to the point, who the fuck ever narrates like that? Even your own internal narration never runs along those descriptive lines, Only a stupid first person narration in a YA novel runs like that and it's farcical to the point of idiocy! When you discover a dead body, there are two things you can do if you're female. If you're in a movie or a TV show, you scream shrilly every time you find a dead body - no exceptions. It's the law. In actual real life, you check the body for signs of life as best as you're able, and/or you immediately call the police. There are no other options, unless you're an asshole who just quietly tiptoes away, pretending you saw nothing. This story sucked which is why I proudly walked away pretending I wasn't nauseated.
- Heartache in Heels by Cate Lawley is the second strike against this author, who was, prior to this, batting a .500 with me. I actually read and reasonably enjoyed one of her first person stories, but even so I felt no attraction to continue that series, and that was before I grew to detest 1PoV with the growing passion I do today. This one went down the drain by going on about the right wardrobe from the very first sentence. It was utterly unrealistic and it's one of those stories that bounces between two main protagonists. Hillary gets the lion's share of the chapters - by a ratio of around 3:1 according to the two-page contents list, which will let you jump to any chapter, but then in the Kobo books ebook reader, becomes a fucking nightmare to get back to the contents list because in its dumb-ass non-wisdom, Kobo not only fails to let you jump back to the contents list in case your finger - which for the average reader is larger than an infants - hit the wrong chapter, it also doesn't even offer a slider bar to get you all the way back. All it seems to offer is a slide to the start of the chapter you're in. There's a chevron button to go back chapter by chapter, but try that for thirty or forty chapters! You can search for the phrase 'Chapter 1' and jump there, but in this case there's no such thing since every chapter is called either Hillary or Brad. In short, you're fucking stuck. If there's a convenient way to do it, I dontl know of it, so I could only get back by exiting the book altogether and marking it as unread to bring me back tot eh start, but when I did that, Kobo ripped the book out of my current reading list and then I had to go search for it to bring it back and then get back to the content list! Thanks Kobo. You jackasses. I like kobo to publish with; I just think their reader was designed by morons who can't themselves read. Fortunately I'm not usually skipping around chapters like that so it's not a problem. I'm typically doing that only when reviewing a book, and I'm happy to say in another ten days or so I won't be facing that nightmare anymore! The author admits what a stupid mistake she made by choosing first person voice when she's forced into having two 1PoV protagonists; she further admits what a dumb-ass decision it was by adding a third first person in the penultimatre chapter!
- More to come
