|
Boyfriend from Hell by Jamie Quaid
Do you think you would like to live your life knowing that,
if you wished someone to go to Hell hard enough, they would really go? Maybe you would like to dispense justice in
its more violent form. Well maybe if you
lived some of your life in the section of radioactive Baltimore known as the
Zone, you might be able to. But really…
how would you feel if you saw your no-good boyfriend sitting behind the wheel
of your car burning to death because you wished him to Hell?
This is just one of the things that Justine (Tina) Clancy
has to worry about these days. Well that and her ability to kill at the mere
thought. She also has to worry about a kitten
that turns into huge wildcat, statues that move, women that turn into chimpanzee
and the fact that she just found out her boyfriend wasn’t such a jerk in the
first place! She also has to worry
about the fact that she may be one of Saturn’s daughter and what that will mean
in the next couple of years. Oh and she has to worry about her very sexy boss
too.
One last thing – along with your ability to dispense Justice,
every time you sent a person who really needed it to Hell something good
happened for you. Like sentence a murderer, get big boobs. Would you be able to ‘do the right thing’
knowing this?
This was a fantastic, fast; thought provoking read that I
almost didn’t go for. I felt that the
story line sounded a little too out there, the characters sounded like they
would be too young for me, and that perhaps it was a book for young
adults. Nevertheless, this was one of
the best choices of speculative fiction I have made in the last couple of
months! It is new, fresh, quirky, has a
really good mystery and so far even though interesting things are physically happening
to Tina she hasn’t become a ‘Mary-Sue’ and I really hope the author doesn’t end
up eventually writing her that way.
It’s not to say that this book didn’t have its flaws –sometimes
you just wanted to smack the heck out of Tina and her whininess, sarcastic
mouth and her attitude that I can do it all by myself – and then other times
you just wanted to wrap her up and hug her to death. Also at 400 pages this
book may have been a tad long, but since this is a book setting up a new series and had tons of world building to
do, I can see why Ms. Quaid opted for
the length of it. It is clever to have
this as a first person point of view book so we never get confused with the
thoughts and emotions of the other main and secondary characters. However, you
can still clearly ‘feel’ what is going on in the other characters heads simply
by Ms Quaid’s clever writing. Even for a
world like this everything is totally believable-the dialogue, the world, the
mystery…none of it feels contrived and you can really feel the anguish and angst
that Tina is going through. Yet even with the angst Tina still goes along with
her old routines and still is doing her very best to pass her Law exams!
No comments:
Post a Comment