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A review by traphag
Becoming Moon by Craig A. Hart
2.0
For me, this book started off well but quickly lost steam about two-thirds of the way through. At the beginning I was genuinely intrigued by the characters and their interactions (despite the weird lack of contractions). Things moved at a slow but logical pace, and I remained interested as people's motivations were revealed. Then, all of a sudden, the author decided to cram a bunch of weird, illogical twists and half-thoughts into the last third of the book, as if he'd gotten bored with writing and wanted to wrap things up. I feel this would have been a much better book if the author stuck with the pace he started with and made a book that was 50-100 pages longer. However, even with that, there were still some issues:
1) There's no way that the main character (and why no name?) could have gotten away with publishing John's book as his own. Seriously, a guy's not going to fight for his art because someone might find out he's gay? Even if not at the time, I'm sure it would have come out in the time since publication. Not only was this twist nonsensical, it was borderline ripped off from the Tom Yates character on House of Cards.
2) We're supposed to believe that Moon so badly wanted the main character to be his ghostwriter that he was able to, in a pinch, convince his supposedly intelligent and well-adjusted granddaughter to seduce the guy? How did that conversation even go down? Maybe this part would have been less frustrating if it had been expanded beyond a weird and abrupt footnote.
3) The whole thing with Emily. The author spends a lot of time developing this character with what I consider to be a good purpose, a way to show the main character maturing, developing sexually, etc., and I thought the way she initially left was fulfilling. I saw no need to bring her back years later for a quick "Hey she showed up and they got married but she turned out to be a druggie kbye" afterthought. Again, maybe if the author spent more time on the evolution of their later relationship it might have seemed less odd.
The author shows a lot of potential here, but overall I feel like he'd benefit from spending more time on his next book to have a better chance of fully realizing the ideas he has. But maybe that's just me.
Spoiler
1) There's no way that the main character (and why no name?) could have gotten away with publishing John's book as his own. Seriously, a guy's not going to fight for his art because someone might find out he's gay? Even if not at the time, I'm sure it would have come out in the time since publication. Not only was this twist nonsensical, it was borderline ripped off from the Tom Yates character on House of Cards.
2) We're supposed to believe that Moon so badly wanted the main character to be his ghostwriter that he was able to, in a pinch, convince his supposedly intelligent and well-adjusted granddaughter to seduce the guy? How did that conversation even go down? Maybe this part would have been less frustrating if it had been expanded beyond a weird and abrupt footnote.
3) The whole thing with Emily. The author spends a lot of time developing this character with what I consider to be a good purpose, a way to show the main character maturing, developing sexually, etc., and I thought the way she initially left was fulfilling. I saw no need to bring her back years later for a quick "Hey she showed up and they got married but she turned out to be a druggie kbye" afterthought. Again, maybe if the author spent more time on the evolution of their later relationship it might have seemed less odd.
The author shows a lot of potential here, but overall I feel like he'd benefit from spending more time on his next book to have a better chance of fully realizing the ideas he has. But maybe that's just me.