Awake For Ever in a Sweet Unrest
By Chuck Rosenthal
Genre: Your guess is as good as ours
Pages: 102
Via: Publicist Request
Note: We received a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Cut to the Chase
Let’s just cut to the chase on this one, okay? What a dud. This book is so busy trying to be clever or hip or something, it forgets to create a coherent story. That kinda matters. Especially if you’re gonna pitch it to us for review.
Newsflash: We don’t do muddled and mussy. We’re just funny that way.
The Basics (more or less)
Beatriz is a rudderless 19 y.o. high school dropout. She lives in a cottage on her parents’ property in southern California. Works as an unpaid volunteer at a funky old bookstore, Beyond Baroque. Has all the get up and go of a slug. Can’t figure out if she’s awake or asleep or what century it is.
The bookstore has a mysterious underground library in which no earthly electronic device or light can operate. So of course Beatriz has to go inside. Once inside, she meets Mary Shelley. Yeah. That Mary Shelley. Of Frankenstein fame. Or maybe this Mary chick is just a ghost? Or maybe Mary’s the Real Deal and Beatriz is the ghost?
It’s all downhill from there. Not even wandering through time with Keats, P.B. Shelley and Bryon can resuscitate this clunker. We have better things to do than trudge through page after plodding page of “Oh, look at me! Aren’t I clever?!” masquerading as a fantasy novel. Or… something.
And to think we coulda been watching paint peel.
Could not force ourselves to finish this dud. If Pretentious, Gimmicky and Tedious were Olympic sports, Awake For Ever would bring home the gold. (Incidentally, the title is from a line in a poem by Keats, Bright Star. Yawn.) It would also place high in Speed Sleep Walking.
Big Wow
Kimber: One thing Mom and I can’t stand is when an author tries so hard to impress, they forget to write a coherent story. Like we said, that kind of matters. So does dishing up stale, rehashed characters that could double as overcooked oatmeal. So, terrif, author dude. We’re so impressed that you get the Romantics. But guess what? So does the neighborhood fluff ball. So Big Bow Wow.
Pages & Paws 