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raeneshine 's review for:
Leda and the Swan
by Anna Caritj
What the heck did I just read? I need to stop buying books from book sales just for the heck of it, because clearly I don't have good luck.
I picked this up because it seemed interesting and the one page I randomly flipped to seemed well written and nicely paced. NOPE. I don't know if Anna Caritj was in a sorority or what, but this seemed like it was a love-hate letter to Greek life. The amount of name dropping of Greek sororities/fraternities in the first 10 pages was absolutely insane and 95% turned me off to the rest of the book.
The other 5% that turned me off was Caritj writing sentences like "The girls each took a piece of candy, shivered their wands at Leda, and ran off, legs flinging" (p. 7). JUST SAY THEY SHOOK THEIR WANDS AND RAN OFF. What is this "shivering" and "flinging" business??? More is not always better when it comes to writing (I say, as I angrily type out a long review). She spends so much time adding frou–frou adjectives to sentences like these, but none in scene transitions that would have been way more helpful.
Other bonus sentences that made me mad:
- "Leda shifted the pumpkin, damp and heavy." (p. 7) what is damp and heavy? Leda or the pumpkin??
- "The pipes in the building were old (and disintegrating from all the Drano the girls poured into them on the daily), and any water Leda ran upstairs plunged like a cataract through the walls." (p. 52) WHAT DO YOU MEAN PLUNGE LIKE A CATARACT
- "'¡Què tragedia!' Leda sang, bouncing on the balls of her feet." (p. 53) RIGHT AFTER SHE FINDS OUT ABOUT THE MISSING GIRL. Also doubled as irritation because of the gratuitous Spanish
- "The sidewalks surrounding the Lawn pumped like arteries early Wednesday morning." (p. 69) what a weird mental image
It just felt like Caritj was trying too hard. Trying too hard to be emotive and lyrical and come off as smart, and also trying to take a critical and thought provoking look at sexual assault...and it all just fell completely flat. And let's not forget her use of the disappearance of a PoC to prop up our white protagonist's growth (to my knowledge Leda is white. Please correct me if I am wrong).
I'll be completely honest, I did not really finish reading the book. After the first two or three chapters I just started flipping through the pages because I wanted to solve the mystery. I would stop every so often and read a page, and then repeated that until the end. Each time I stopped there would always be a new names. Very rarely did I see a repeat character. So I'm not 100% positive when I say this, but I also think there's just too many characters in this book.
Just disappointing all around.
I picked this up because it seemed interesting and the one page I randomly flipped to seemed well written and nicely paced. NOPE. I don't know if Anna Caritj was in a sorority or what, but this seemed like it was a love-hate letter to Greek life. The amount of name dropping of Greek sororities/fraternities in the first 10 pages was absolutely insane and 95% turned me off to the rest of the book.
The other 5% that turned me off was Caritj writing sentences like "The girls each took a piece of candy, shivered their wands at Leda, and ran off, legs flinging" (p. 7). JUST SAY THEY SHOOK THEIR WANDS AND RAN OFF. What is this "shivering" and "flinging" business??? More is not always better when it comes to writing (I say, as I angrily type out a long review). She spends so much time adding frou–frou adjectives to sentences like these, but none in scene transitions that would have been way more helpful.
Other bonus sentences that made me mad:
- "Leda shifted the pumpkin, damp and heavy." (p. 7) what is damp and heavy? Leda or the pumpkin??
- "The pipes in the building were old (and disintegrating from all the Drano the girls poured into them on the daily), and any water Leda ran upstairs plunged like a cataract through the walls." (p. 52) WHAT DO YOU MEAN PLUNGE LIKE A CATARACT
- "'¡Què tragedia!' Leda sang, bouncing on the balls of her feet." (p. 53) RIGHT AFTER SHE FINDS OUT ABOUT THE MISSING GIRL. Also doubled as irritation because of the gratuitous Spanish
- "The sidewalks surrounding the Lawn pumped like arteries early Wednesday morning." (p. 69) what a weird mental image
It just felt like Caritj was trying too hard. Trying too hard to be emotive and lyrical and come off as smart, and also trying to take a critical and thought provoking look at sexual assault...and it all just fell completely flat. And let's not forget her use of the disappearance of a PoC to prop up our white protagonist's growth (to my knowledge Leda is white. Please correct me if I am wrong).
I'll be completely honest, I did not really finish reading the book. After the first two or three chapters I just started flipping through the pages because I wanted to solve the mystery. I would stop every so often and read a page, and then repeated that until the end. Each time I stopped there would always be a new names. Very rarely did I see a repeat character. So I'm not 100% positive when I say this, but I also think there's just too many characters in this book.
Just disappointing all around.