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kiiwiisii 's review for:
Wickedpedia
by Chris Van Etten
There are a few different covers out there for Wickedpedia, and each one creepier than the last. It had the promise of a real Goosebumps-style thriller and the perfect fall read, but it wasn’t mean to be.
From the get go, I wasn’t enthused about any of the characters. Cole and his friends are seniors in high school, so around 17/18, but from their conversations, they could be in middle school. They’re all incredibly whiny and melodramatic and causing fights over nothing.
The storyline itself started out strong enough. The novel followed a lot of the conventions of a typical mystery novel with red herrings and false clues, but it quickly fell to the far side of the line with off-color puns and incredibly graphic and gory death scenes. The writing got a little off as well, featuring lines like, “He kept on walking until he was home, his shame trotting alongside him like a stray dog he’d made the mistake of feeding once, now bonded to him for life”. One character speaks German for two or three chapters with no translation or indication of what she’s saying.
What started out as an intriguing modern-day horror plot, quickly deteriorated into pure testosterone-driven fantasy. Students are bursting into classrooms in the middle of the day to start fights, police officers on duty are distracted from the job by the aroma of coffee, and nerds seek revenge for getting dissed by a girl they feel entitled to. Too many plot holes, including a forced ending. I barely finished this one.
From the get go, I wasn’t enthused about any of the characters. Cole and his friends are seniors in high school, so around 17/18, but from their conversations, they could be in middle school. They’re all incredibly whiny and melodramatic and causing fights over nothing.
The storyline itself started out strong enough. The novel followed a lot of the conventions of a typical mystery novel with red herrings and false clues, but it quickly fell to the far side of the line with off-color puns and incredibly graphic and gory death scenes. The writing got a little off as well, featuring lines like, “He kept on walking until he was home, his shame trotting alongside him like a stray dog he’d made the mistake of feeding once, now bonded to him for life”. One character speaks German for two or three chapters with no translation or indication of what she’s saying.
What started out as an intriguing modern-day horror plot, quickly deteriorated into pure testosterone-driven fantasy. Students are bursting into classrooms in the middle of the day to start fights, police officers on duty are distracted from the job by the aroma of coffee, and nerds seek revenge for getting dissed by a girl they feel entitled to. Too many plot holes, including a forced ending. I barely finished this one.