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kannunziato 's review for:
Dead Eleven
by Jimmy Juliano
2.5 Stars
A common problem, but the book is too long. It’s supposed to be suspenseful, but a plodding investigation doesn’t provide the right atmosphere to keep that suspense building. The book is also ultimately about grief, which could be a horror concept, but it’s not executed well enough here. So it sort of suffers from a personality problem, where it wants to be a supernatural thriller, an investigative mystery, and a story about coping with loss all at once, while never totally succeeding in artfully tying those separate threads together.
Book also isn’t particularly well written. It’s a debut by a guy who got his start writing reddit horror, so maybe there’s room to grow here, but it suffers from a lot of common mistakes. The characters are all pretty hollow, and not very interesting. The technique of adding letters and audio interviews is something that seems clever in theory, but it ultimately results in the author “telling instead of showing”, which is one of my least favorite writerly pitfalls - a character monologuing about how another character’s personality instead of just showing us that behavior and letting us draw our own conclusions, a character retelling events that have already happened rather than letting them unfold on the page. I also as a personal pet peeve hate book intros that are like “What you’re about to read is crazy but trust me it’s true” - like bro, no it’s not. It’s a fiction book lmao. Just start the book.
A common problem, but the book is too long. It’s supposed to be suspenseful, but a plodding investigation doesn’t provide the right atmosphere to keep that suspense building. The book is also ultimately about grief, which could be a horror concept, but it’s not executed well enough here. So it sort of suffers from a personality problem, where it wants to be a supernatural thriller, an investigative mystery, and a story about coping with loss all at once, while never totally succeeding in artfully tying those separate threads together.
Book also isn’t particularly well written. It’s a debut by a guy who got his start writing reddit horror, so maybe there’s room to grow here, but it suffers from a lot of common mistakes. The characters are all pretty hollow, and not very interesting. The technique of adding letters and audio interviews is something that seems clever in theory, but it ultimately results in the author “telling instead of showing”, which is one of my least favorite writerly pitfalls - a character monologuing about how another character’s personality instead of just showing us that behavior and letting us draw our own conclusions, a character retelling events that have already happened rather than letting them unfold on the page. I also as a personal pet peeve hate book intros that are like “What you’re about to read is crazy but trust me it’s true” - like bro, no it’s not. It’s a fiction book lmao. Just start the book.