Tuesday, May 8, 2012

60-Page Reviews: Ditched: A Love Story by Robin Mellom

What can I say? I think the title says loud and clear that this book sucks. I actually read significantly more than sixty pages, but I was just trying to read the whole thing so that I might make fun of it more easily. But alas, my life is time-crunched, both in and out of book club. Thus I found it prudent to stop this bloody awful novel and promptly did so.

While I may not be an expert on determining prose quality (I know, I know), the writing here felt very loose and awkward. Certainly not eloquent like Mary Shelley or, say, Jenny Hubbard. The story was dull enough (just an air-headed girl fussing about boys and kisses), but what drove me bleedin' bonky was the narrator, Justina Griffith. She just struck me as a tease, kissing boys and then running off to kiss other boys. At one point someone says Justina seems to consider kissing some kind of chore and she replies (paraphrased), "No, more of a sport." Plus the humor relied heavily on randomness - not the good kind one finds in the works of Lewis Carroll or Douglas Adams or Terry Pratchett - just oddness. Random humor, in my opinion, has to be carefully executed or else we have an effect akin to that of a slasher movie claiming to be horror.

I tried not to judge this book by its cover and subject, but garsh, does it suck! Neeext!

Final grade: F

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