Reviewed by: BigAl
Genre: Contemporary Fiction
Approximate word count: 70-75,000 words
Availability
Click
on a YES above to go to appropriate page in Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or
Smashwords store
Author:
A
meteorologist for the US Air Force, Bart Hopkins is the father of three kids.
None of them have a cell phone or accounts on Facebook or Twitter. He has
written or co-written three other novels.
For more,
visit his website or like his page on Facebook.
Description:
“Like is a selfie of modern times that
takes you on a journey through the lives of normal people—the new normal—fully
connected in an electronic age.
You’ll meet
Greg, a realtor whose success stems from his Internet savvy. His tweets are
re-tweeted a hundred times and thousands follow his blog.
Then
there’s Paul, who stumbles on an old crush while Facebooking. Through research
of her online habits, he arranges a ‘chance’ meeting so they can fall in Like
with each other.
Martin is a
cancer survivor with renewed purpose in life thanks to a supportive social
media family.
It’s a
tapestry of people and events woven together with this era’s most abundant
thread: social media.”
Appraisal:
I love the
premise of this book, exploring how social media is changing our lives, for
better and for worse. Much of what happened to the characters had easily drawn
parallels to my own social media experiences. There are several characters with
story threads that are somewhat independent although as the novel develops some
of the threads connect.
Which
brings me to my first complaint. We’re introduced to each of the main story
threads in consecutive chapters at the start of the book, hopefully whetting
our appetite to learn more about each of the characters, but making for a long
ramp up before we start to see any significant conflict. For some readers, this
may be fine. But if you’re a “give me action on the first page” type, this book
isn’t for you. I was somewhere in the middle, noticing that it was a slow
starter, but curious enough to keep plodding on. There is also a large cast of
characters and keeping them straight in my mind was tough although obviously
easier the more I read as each of their stories solidified.
I also
found that while I liked the overall story, there were little glitches that
irritated me as a reader. For example Rose (a character not mentioned in the
blurb who was searching for a long-lost daughter) was driving by the daughter’s
house and we’re told this:
The numbers on the outside only
confirmed what she already knew. Thanks to the all-knowing, all-reaching
fingers of the Internet, she’d had the address before she left Austin.
Nothing
wrong with that except we’d already learned Rose had the address prior to this.
In fact, it had been mentioned at least twice in the last few pages. The second
sentence is telling us what we already know one more time.
Another
example is this sequence:
Inside, he wondered if her posting
that picture meant something more. Does it mean she likes me? he wondered.
Years later, with the wisdom of experience, he’d understand that they were
already in love.
What
purpose does that last sentence serve? Odds are the reader already senses this.
I did. Instead we get a ham-handed telling of what we should already know
instead of trusting the reader to understand. (Not to mentioned the repetition
of “he wondered.”) Despite too many of these kind of issues, I still love the
premise and found myself enjoying the story much of the time in between
cringing over one of these lines.
FYI:
A small
amount of adult language.
Format/Typo Issues:
No
significant issues.
Rating: *** Three Stars
No comments:
Post a Comment