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book_pie2 's review for:
The Lifeboat Clique
by Kathy Parks
This book was okay at best. The pacing, especially at the end was really rushed. Also, the first chapter starts out like halfway through the book, and then when you gay to that part in the book, it says
“...until events played out and one thing led to another...”
Like just give us a synopsis of what happened in the first chapter! It’s been 60% of a book since then and I DONT REMEMBER. It’s like one of those scenes in movies where it shows a short clip then freezes the screen with a record scratch. “I bet you’re wondering how I got into this situation, well that the story I’m going to tell you.” It feels like the author just didn’t have a good first chapter, so she took one of the only exciting things that happens in the book and bogged it down with exposition.
Also the chapters aren’t set up poorly, but the book jumped forward and back in time kind of unnecessary. Almost like she wrote the book in chronological order until she decided that the one thing that might connect us to the characters needed to happen 80% of the way through. I don’t think she did a bad job with the time jumps, it’s just it didn’t feel like the story needed it.
Also the moments that are supposed to be “exciting”in the book just aren’t. There was no emotion in my brain while reading it and I had no connections with the characters. Like, I kinda liked Croix (yes, like LaCroix) but then he was irrelevant. And I think I would have been attached to the cat, but not even he was fleshed out enough to be likeable.
Okay, my biggest problem with this book is the chapter “titles”. They were really just numbers written out, and it would have FINE if they were just regular numbers. BUT NO! THEY WERE IN SPANISH!!! LITERALLY 99% OF THIS BOOK HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH SPANISH. It’s not like the main character grew up in a Latino neighborhood, NO. ONE SCENE takes place in her Spanish class at the beginning and the she says “Mi amiga esta en la playa” (My friend is on the beach) ONCE at the end of the book. And the author has the audacity to use Spanish numbers for counting the chapters, kind of saying like “this book is about speaking Spanish.” And she could have made it work, THE BOOK IS SET IN CALIFORNIA. It just didn’t fit into the story and felt really out of place. Also the other little bits of Spanish that were included felt really forced and I don’t know if the author speaks any Spanish, but it didn’t feel natural at all and felt like it was placed in there because the author felt like she wanted to flex that she could count to 20 in Spanish.
2/5
“...until events played out and one thing led to another...”
Like just give us a synopsis of what happened in the first chapter! It’s been 60% of a book since then and I DONT REMEMBER. It’s like one of those scenes in movies where it shows a short clip then freezes the screen with a record scratch. “I bet you’re wondering how I got into this situation, well that the story I’m going to tell you.” It feels like the author just didn’t have a good first chapter, so she took one of the only exciting things that happens in the book and bogged it down with exposition.
Also the chapters aren’t set up poorly, but the book jumped forward and back in time kind of unnecessary. Almost like she wrote the book in chronological order until she decided that the one thing that might connect us to the characters needed to happen 80% of the way through. I don’t think she did a bad job with the time jumps, it’s just it didn’t feel like the story needed it.
Also the moments that are supposed to be “exciting”in the book just aren’t. There was no emotion in my brain while reading it and I had no connections with the characters. Like, I kinda liked Croix (yes, like LaCroix) but then he was irrelevant. And I think I would have been attached to the cat, but not even he was fleshed out enough to be likeable.
Okay, my biggest problem with this book is the chapter “titles”. They were really just numbers written out, and it would have FINE if they were just regular numbers. BUT NO! THEY WERE IN SPANISH!!! LITERALLY 99% OF THIS BOOK HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH SPANISH. It’s not like the main character grew up in a Latino neighborhood, NO. ONE SCENE takes place in her Spanish class at the beginning and the she says “Mi amiga esta en la playa” (My friend is on the beach) ONCE at the end of the book. And the author has the audacity to use Spanish numbers for counting the chapters, kind of saying like “this book is about speaking Spanish.” And she could have made it work, THE BOOK IS SET IN CALIFORNIA. It just didn’t fit into the story and felt really out of place. Also the other little bits of Spanish that were included felt really forced and I don’t know if the author speaks any Spanish, but it didn’t feel natural at all and felt like it was placed in there because the author felt like she wanted to flex that she could count to 20 in Spanish.
2/5