Ash's Reviews > Penpal

A potentially great creepy story hidden beneath a steaming pile of deuce. The writing is bad. Like, really bad.

The author attempts to use nonlinear progression to tell the story, which can be incredibly effective if it is well-executed. In this case, though, it creates a muddled mess of language that relies on a formulaic chapter structure to get the point across. Each chapter rambles on unnecessarily, and concludes with a twist of some sort. This is gimmicky, and it loses any potential effectiveness due to consistent use. The writing quality is very poor, and reminds me of a first year university paper, crammed full of fluff words to try and meet the minimum length requirement.

Another thing that ruined this book for me is the fact that the author clearly has NO IDEA how children talk, interact, or react. The story is told retrospectively, but the character never reads as the age that he claims to be. Actually, the main character is so poorly developed that it's kind of like an awkward 20-something is sort of rambling through an empty husk that just looks like a 5-year-old. SpooOOooOooooky. Really, though, kids are not like this, and it really, really ruined the delivery.

Two stars because the story is kinda cool and kinda creepy, but holy poops is this ever dreck.