Genre: Literary Fiction
Approximate word count: 145-150,000 words
Availability
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Author:
“Devon
Pearse was born and raised in beautiful St. Augustine, Florida. As a child, she
was surrounded by classic literary works and grew to love and cherish them as
dear old friends. It was only natural that she would dream of one day being an
author and joining the ranks of the creators of these other worlds,
unforgettable characters and thought provoking prose.”
Description:
“What does
it feel like to stare into the face of madness? Or to anticipate your own?
Would you drive away your only love? Could you pretend it didn't matter? How
far would you go to protect a friend, or to avenge a death?”
Appraisal:
Characterized
in the official descriptions as
“semi-autobiographical,” I’ll leave it to you to decide which parts are true
and which aren’t (your guess is as good as mine). I’ll often find that books I
or someone else describes as “literary fiction,” like this one, show deftness
with language (which this does), but have a story that isn’t that entertaining
or that I care about. I’ll take a good mystery, thriller, or other genre
fiction that uses plain language to tell a compelling story over much literary
fiction. A Lighter Shade of Gray
(which I believe beat those other gray books into publication and shouldn’t be
confused with them) has beautiful language and a story I could care about.
Devon
Pearse (yes, the protagonist and author’s names are the same) has a mother
whose mental illnesses eventually lead her to a rural group home and leave
Devon afraid for the future. Are the causes genetic? Devon is fearful that
she’s seeing a glimpse of her future and is unwilling to commit to her
boyfriend, or even allow him to commit to her. In fact, Devon goes through much
of life making decisions influenced by what might
happen. There is some mystery and potential romance to liven up the story as
well. It was a story that drew me in slowly, but once it got a hold of me, it
wouldn’t let go.
FYI:
Some adult
language.
Format/Typo Issues:
The Kindle
version I received for review had some issues with hyphens in words where they
obviously didn’t belong. These appeared to be an artifact from formatting for a
paper version.
No
significant typos.
Rating: ***** Five stars
4 comments:
I often avoid literary fiction for the reasons you mentioned. Thanks for letting us know that the story here is also compelling.
Too bad about the title; I think it's bound to be hurt by looking like a "shades of gray" knock off or someone trying to capitalize on its popularity.
I agree about the title: pity.
Also a pity about the hyphens. Is there still a need for hyphenated words at line ends in printed material these days? And even if there is, if one returns to the file from which the pbook was prepared and formats very lightly for Kindle, does that not take care of the problem?
The title might get attention from people she wouldn't otherwise. Visibility is generally good, but could cut both ways.
I think things like the hyphens happen because the process the author or publisher (in this case, I think it is a small press) don't take such things into account when setting up their process. They were optimized for paper books and I'd guess didn't consider everything when integrating the creation of electronic books into the process. Big publishers have loads of these kind of issues. The hyphen one I see a lot from them, despite reading very few of their books.
Great review! I linked to your review on my list of books to avoid (me personally, not everyone as a whole) on my blog post today: http://authorjess.blogspot.com/2012/08/whats-up-wednesday-book-to-adore-books.html . Feel free to stop by and check it out! :)
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