Rating: WARTY!
This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.
This novel was very short and not appealing to me at all. I started out not liking it, began to like it when I got a little bit in, when the main character had a career change, but then went right off it when I realized that nothing really had changed, nor was it going to. The main character, with the unlikely name of Elinor, shades of Hill House, was one of the most drab and uninteresting people I've ever had to read about. She showed no sense of self-worth, no intelligence, no motivation, and was quite willing to be in an emotionally abusive relationship with a complete jerk of a guy for no reason whatsoever. She wasn't even smart enough to know she was in an abusive relationship nor did any of her friends care enough for her to warn her off it. In short she was an idiot and showed no sign of ever improving. How she ever hoped to be a real journalist is a mystery.
The story was all dot com, but paradoxically was so starkly newspaper black and white as to be a caricature of itself. There was not one single decent guy depicted in this entire novel that I saw - although I freely admit I read only half of it, skimmed another quarter, read the end and then gave up on it completely. The end was entirely dissatisfying. If I were to judge solely from this novel, which I won't, I'd be forced to conclude that the author hates guys! Either that or she doesn't know how to write decent male characters or even gray-area character, but paradoxically the women were such drab people in this story that they were colorless. And everyone was so one dimensional that I honestly believe it I had the print version of this, and turned it sideways, I would not be able to see it any more, and I'd be fine with that.
The story is essentially of Elinor getting a new job writing those idiot dumb-ass lists that far too many websites post. She apparently excels at this mindless task while her boyfriend, who doesn't give a shit about her (which begs the unanswered question as to he's even with her in the first place) is an having an affair right under her nose, gets this purportedly prestigious job and then finds it's not as great as he thought. He leaves Elinor and then wants to come back to her and Elinor doesn't take him back because she's too stupid to even realize that's what he's after!
That's it! That's the entire story and it drags on and on page after page with one moron after another trooping through the meandering paragraphs. Some parts were flashbacks, but they were so badly written that I had a hard time telling when they were done and we were back in the present. I detest flashbacks. This was an awful story and I resent even the relatively small amount of time I spent reading what I did of it. here;s badly written: "The headphones were giant white conical spheres." What, exactly, is a conical sphere?! I cannot recommend this, not even as soporific reading, because it is so irritating it wouldn't actually put you to sleep.
