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janeneal 's review for:
The Face on the Milk Carton
by Caroline B. Cooney
This book was TERRIBLE but these were my biggest annoyances.
The Plot:
The premise is very interesting and seemed simple enough. Janie sees her face on a milk carton, so she must have been kidnapped. It's a bit dated, obviously, but still sounds like a cool idea. However, the author does almost nothing with that idea for the longest time. Janie sees it, keeps the carton, and then does nothing except fret, fall in love with her neighbor, get mad at her parents, not want to leave her parents, rinse, repeat.
It just seemed so unbelievable that someone who even suspects that they might be kidnapped would be terribly concerned over their high school crush. In Stranger Things, Nancy even says how weird it was that last week she worried about what shirt she should wear for her boyfriend but now that she's fighting monsters, who the fuck cares?
The Characters:
I didn't like the characters, partially because they were so badly written. Everyone's interactions and relationships just felt so false. Janie's friends may as well not have existed for all they added to the plot. Reeve was ~kind of~ important but only because he could drive (and be a love interest).
The worst part was how Janie and her parents talked and interacted. It was so unreal.
"You were her little girl, by the man who had been chosen as her my by the Leader."
"Mate?" repeated Janie. "What an animal term for the love between husband and wife!"
I mean...what teenager, past the 1950s maybe, would talk like that? So much of the dialogue was just info-dumps and very contrived. This may be a personal preference, but it really bugged me that she would refer to her parents as "Mother" and "Daddy" (although sometimes she called her mom "Mommy"). It felt inconsistent, besides being just kind of weird.
The Writing:
The writing was aggressively bad. Like, I am so grateful that most YA novels that are published now seem to have much higher standards.
This bit is an instance of jumping around pointless and bad writing:
Not only did Reeve come out his door in time to see her drive, but so did his older sister Lizzie. Lizzie was not one of Janie's favorite people. Lizzie had occasionally baby-sat for Janie in the past, but not because she liked kids. Lizzie rarely did anything except for the money. Lizzie was supposed to be safely in law school now, being as brilliant there as she had been in Princeton. Janie did not consider Lizzie's absence a loss to the neighborhood. How annoying to see Lizzie home.
Besides the obvious of how many sentences can you start or include Lizzie's name, what is the point of this? Oh man, Lizzie didn't love little kids and wants money. What the fuck did she do to you, Janie? Maybe she isn't glad to be home living next to you? There's this whole background set-up of how Reeve is terrible at everything, especially grades, which really means nothing later. It's just filler, as is this entire paragraph. This whole paragraph could have been contained in one sentence, maybe two.
There's also this gem:
She got halfway there and had to finish her thoughts. Had to write. It was like a druggie stabbing his vein.
And this:
"You talked about me last year to Sarah-Charlotte?"
"Yeah. Now, do you feel like kissing me?" She did. They did.
And it was good.
AND THIS:
"Can you imagine the publicity?" said Janie. "All those horrible newspapers in grocery store racks. Talk shows where everybody else on it has trans-bi-cross sexual habits." She shuddered. "I can hardly wait to be among them."
The Plot:
The premise is very interesting and seemed simple enough. Janie sees her face on a milk carton, so she must have been kidnapped. It's a bit dated, obviously, but still sounds like a cool idea. However, the author does almost nothing with that idea for the longest time. Janie sees it, keeps the carton, and then does nothing except fret, fall in love with her neighbor, get mad at her parents, not want to leave her parents, rinse, repeat.
It just seemed so unbelievable that someone who even suspects that they might be kidnapped would be terribly concerned over their high school crush. In Stranger Things, Nancy even says how weird it was that last week she worried about what shirt she should wear for her boyfriend but now that she's fighting monsters, who the fuck cares?
The Characters:
I didn't like the characters, partially because they were so badly written. Everyone's interactions and relationships just felt so false. Janie's friends may as well not have existed for all they added to the plot. Reeve was ~kind of~ important but only because he could drive (and be a love interest).
The worst part was how Janie and her parents talked and interacted. It was so unreal.
"You were her little girl, by the man who had been chosen as her my by the Leader."
"Mate?" repeated Janie. "What an animal term for the love between husband and wife!"
I mean...what teenager, past the 1950s maybe, would talk like that? So much of the dialogue was just info-dumps and very contrived. This may be a personal preference, but it really bugged me that she would refer to her parents as "Mother" and "Daddy" (although sometimes she called her mom "Mommy"). It felt inconsistent, besides being just kind of weird.
The Writing:
The writing was aggressively bad. Like, I am so grateful that most YA novels that are published now seem to have much higher standards.
This bit is an instance of jumping around pointless and bad writing:
Not only did Reeve come out his door in time to see her drive, but so did his older sister Lizzie. Lizzie was not one of Janie's favorite people. Lizzie had occasionally baby-sat for Janie in the past, but not because she liked kids. Lizzie rarely did anything except for the money. Lizzie was supposed to be safely in law school now, being as brilliant there as she had been in Princeton. Janie did not consider Lizzie's absence a loss to the neighborhood. How annoying to see Lizzie home.
Besides the obvious of how many sentences can you start or include Lizzie's name, what is the point of this? Oh man, Lizzie didn't love little kids and wants money. What the fuck did she do to you, Janie? Maybe she isn't glad to be home living next to you? There's this whole background set-up of how Reeve is terrible at everything, especially grades, which really means nothing later. It's just filler, as is this entire paragraph. This whole paragraph could have been contained in one sentence, maybe two.
There's also this gem:
She got halfway there and had to finish her thoughts. Had to write. It was like a druggie stabbing his vein.
And this:
"You talked about me last year to Sarah-Charlotte?"
"Yeah. Now, do you feel like kissing me?" She did. They did.
And it was good.
AND THIS:
"Can you imagine the publicity?" said Janie. "All those horrible newspapers in grocery store racks. Talk shows where everybody else on it has trans-bi-cross sexual habits." She shuddered. "I can hardly wait to be among them."