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bneenos 's review for:
Janie Face to Face
by Caroline B. Cooney
There are just some books you read as a kid and maybe...they just shouldn't grow with you.
I was a huge Cooney fan in my middle school and even into high school years, so I picked this up for the nostalgia and to see what had happened.
And I realized, no offense to my taste in books as a 12 year old, this really is terrible writing (call me a book snob, I'll live).
It's not a terrible story. It's just told in this removed third person flattened tone with horrible word choice that hearkens back to a simpler time that clashes with the modern pace set by the social media slammed into this book. It's the James Patterson of young adult books. Oh wait, James Patterson is the James Patterson of young adult books. But maybe Cooney is a distant second in perfunctorily ignoring the craft and art of storytelling.
And I'll totally climb on the bandwagon of Janie-hating. She's a bit whiny for sure and all that (eh, forgivable), but I do wish we'd seen her just once find her independence or lady balls or whatever and not need to view her worth through whatever male she's connected to. If that could have happened once, I would have no problem with the rest of the story.
Would I want my future daughters reading this and taking Janie as any kind of example of feminism? No, no, no, no, no.
Is it still a good suspense story? Sure - perhaps more so if the reader is 12.
I was a huge Cooney fan in my middle school and even into high school years, so I picked this up for the nostalgia and to see what had happened.
And I realized, no offense to my taste in books as a 12 year old, this really is terrible writing (call me a book snob, I'll live).
It's not a terrible story. It's just told in this removed third person flattened tone with horrible word choice that hearkens back to a simpler time that clashes with the modern pace set by the social media slammed into this book. It's the James Patterson of young adult books. Oh wait, James Patterson is the James Patterson of young adult books. But maybe Cooney is a distant second in perfunctorily ignoring the craft and art of storytelling.
And I'll totally climb on the bandwagon of Janie-hating. She's a bit whiny for sure and all that (eh, forgivable), but I do wish we'd seen her just once find her independence or lady balls or whatever and not need to view her worth through whatever male she's connected to. If that could have happened once, I would have no problem with the rest of the story.
Would I want my future daughters reading this and taking Janie as any kind of example of feminism? No, no, no, no, no.
Is it still a good suspense story? Sure - perhaps more so if the reader is 12.