Author: Kaitlin Ward
Publisher: Egmont
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 for this review. The chance to read a new book is often enough reward aplenty!
I had problems with this novel right from the off. There were so many of them that it's hard to know where to start. It’s written in first person PoV which I detest because few writers can do it and make it readable without inducing nausea. There’s nothing more fingernails-on-a-chalk-board than someone constantly admonishing a reader to “Lookit ME! Lissen to ME! Nothing’s more important than what’s happening to MEEEEE!” Why so many writers choose this form is a mystery. I generally adore writers who do not and it seems so much more annoying in YA novels, probably because YA stories are all-too-often far more petty and frivolous than is literature aimed at a more mature readership, for reasons unknown.
This one begins with the narrator, Lea, trying to induce her friend Hillary to come into the graveyard with her, when it’s Hillary’s idea to go there in the first place! Hillary evidently has an irrational fear of graveyards which makes it problematic for her to do tracings of the gravestones for her family history project. Why she chose to trace rather than simply photograph was unexplained. Maybe her fear has grown because she’s lived directly across the street from the graveyard all her life? Familiarity breeds terror?
Lea sounds like a really needy person. She was responsible for Hillary’s breaking-up with her boyfriend because of this sorry neediness. What if Hillary’s boyfriend’s name had been Bill? Maybe history would be different?!
Anyway, as they’re leaving the cemetery, they walk right over a grave which is leaking blood – that’s how oblivious they are of their surroundings – and this is despite Lea’s ragging on Hillary, and despite Hillary’s supposed phobia. Neither of them notices until they step in it. Worse than this, they’re too stupid to grasp that a corpse isn’t going to leak blood, and even if it did, the blood isn’t going to come flooding up to the surface of the grave from six feet below. This creeping 'dumb-assery' problem becomes worse as the story goes on.
On the positive side, this isn’t your usual trope YA – Lea is lesbian, so there’s no bad-boy boyfriend around, and fortunately, Aracely (Lea’s girlfriend whose parents are French) isn't a “bad boy” who has hair falling into her eyes, and has gold flecks in her eyes, and is ripped, so it's not all bad! Lea is ‘out’ at school and at home, yet her best friend’s mother doesn’t know and apparently wouldn’t approve, so they keep her in the dark. Hmm! I wonder what the future of this relationship is going to be?
Well, on top of all that, Aracely isn’t out yet which is another inexplicable issue since…FRENCH! I know all French aren’t alike, but it seems to me there’d be a lot less judgment and opposition in French parents (actually one parent – her dad. Mom is not in the picture) than ever there would be with US parents, who tend to be much more conservative than Europeans.
The problem with Aracely is that Lea’s only attraction to her is that “She’s so, so pretty.” Seriously? Can you not think of a single thing to recommend her other than her skin? I don’t get why female writers so persistently do this to female characters. I don’t get why they don’t get that regardless of how the rest of the world objectively sees a person, they’re always beautiful to the person who loves them.
Hillary’s boyfriend is named after a brand of jeans and has “…the standard blond-haired, blue-eyed thing going on…”? What on Earth does that mean? That only Aryans are acceptable or that this is a standard because it’s the most common appearance? Both are so wrong that they couldn’t be more wrong without going around the other side and starting back towards right again. I don’t know what that phrase means, but blue-eyed boys are a common trope in YA written by white authors.
As she walks home, Lea passes “…an LED display with bright pink bulbs.” LEDs are not bulbs, so I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean, but we're conveniently distracted from that conundrum, because it’s right at that point that the earth starts bleeding – there is blood coming up from the side-walk, and for some reason this causes mass hysteria! Lea just goes home and watches TV like it’s any other day. Apparently the event is world-wide.
This blood “…doesn’t just drown the grass - it suffocates it.” I fail to see any real distinction here, but we can put that down to artistic license! The problem with the blood is that it’s rising everywhere and we’re told that it’s causing floods. It’s supposedly running down the streets like rain in a heavy rainstorm, but it’s not draining away, either, so it makes no sense.
Although it appears exactly like blood right down to the smell, apparently it’s not congealing like blood! How this welling of blood is causing society to break down is unexplained. We’re told that places like NYC have power outages, and that coastal areas are flooding, but there’s nothing offered to explain how, exactly, these things are actually occurring.
There seems to be this big deal about scientists not knowing whether it’s blood! Seriously? It would be the easiest thing in the world to identify whether it is or not, yet this is like a big mystery? It made no sense. Worse than this, after Lea informs us that Aracely wants to be a scientist, the latter remarks (after it starts raining blood) that blood is too thick to evaporate! Nonsense. The solid particles in blood won’t evaporate, of course, but the liquid – which is water (duhh!) will. But that’s not how it’s raining blood – it’s not like the blood is developing its own hydro-cycle! Once you have a story where blood is unaccountably welling-up from the earth itself, there’s no reason why it can’t magically precipitate from the sky, too.
At one point Aracely indicates that no one has yet determined what this red substance truly is, but only two pages later (and in the same time frame), Lea is saying that it’s been specifically identified as human blood, so there’s a big disconnect there (and Aracely’s scientific credentials take another hit!).
We read at one point: “…she smiles at me - I can tell by the crinkles at the corner of her eyes.” That's the only way to tall that someone is smiling?! I guess Aracely's so, so pretty lips don't do the trick? Or maybe the narrator, Lea, isn't very smart? There's a good case to be made for that. At one point, these idiot girls go out for a drive – in blood that’s a foot deep! Of course the car breaks down.
This blood flood is completely unrealistic - even within its own fictional framework. Despite this up-welling and raining of blood, life goes on pretty much as normal: everyone goes off to work, kids go off to school. What? There’s absolutely zero police presence. There is no national guard. There is no fire department. There's apparently no emergency! Worse than this, there's no fly problem! Flies swarm all over a bloody road-kill corpse yet here, when the entire world is covered in blood, there are no flies?
Lea’s mom is described as “firmly atheist”, but she’s later described as avidly reading the Bible? No, it's not going to happen! Not if she's an actual atheist as opposed to a fence sitter.<.p>
The blood is the only character that changes in this story! Or at least, it changes its character. First it’s not toxic, then it is, but only if drunk. It’s not airborne, then respirators are being handed out, but you have to go out in the blood to the courthouse to pick up your respirator? Despite there being shuttle buses to transport people around, Lea and Aracely choose to walk back home! In blood. A foot deep. That’s now supposedly toxic.
Later they go to a party in the park, in the toxic blood. That's a foot deep. That’s when I quit reading this nonsense. I will not recommend something as juvenile as this, not even to an undiscriminating YA audience.
