Howdy YAL!

This seems to be the week where I can’t come up with definitive feelings for a book.  And where I read books that take place on disaster curises  Like with my previous read, Daughter of Deep Silence suffered some major issues.  But at the same time it was enjoyable.  Luckily, for Daughter of Deep Silence the writing was solid enough for me to give it a decent grade, but I’m still going to discuss it’s faults.

The book is sort of a retelling of The Count of Monte Cristo (and if you haven’t you should really check out the movie version because, fans self).  And if your not interested in either the book/movie version of that classic,  this book is sort of like that ABC show Revenge.

Let’s just say that as a retelling, I couldn’t really feel any sympathy for Francis or Libby or Fibby as I’ve grown accustomed to.  She is just a full blown psychopath.  I think it’s because unlike Dantes, it doesn’t appear that she has suffered that much and honestly while what happened to her was horrible I couldn’t feel her pain.

I think this might have been in part on the age group the book was targeting. I actually think this book might’ve been better as a YA novel turned to NA novel.  Rather, than have the kids find their one true love and be utterly betrayed at the ripe old age of middle school.

Nah, that doesn’t work.

Having the characters aged up to New Adult age would at least allow, for a little more flexibility and for the relationships to seems a little deeper.

Though, Fibby would’ve still been a psycho.

God, I don’t think I’ve read a first point of view that was so twisted.  At first I hated Fibby, but the further the book progressed I found her psycho-ness sort of intriguing than anything else.  Save for her relationship with Grey, but more about that later.

The character just does some insane, bat shit crazy things that you’ll just keep shaking your head at.  And I think Ryan did a good job at showing how emotionally unstable this character was. I never did emphasize with though, just saying.  Or even like here.

What I really didn’t like was that there was such an emphasis on romance.  To be honest, I didn’t care for Grey.  To be fair, I really didn’t care for Dantes’s girlfriend in the movie either, but at least that relationship seemed complex enough where you could appreciate it.  Here I was like, dude you can’t even recognize she’s Frances?  She didn’t even dye her hair like that chick did in Suspicion and you still can’t recognize your one true love?

Plot holes like this drove me crazy, which might be why I loved the character Shepherd.

He seemed to be the only character with any sort of common sense here, but in the end he was just sort of thrown to the side.

To be fair, logic in general was thrown outside.  I had no idea how Fibby was able to do what she did, because I would think driving in a car with a rotting corpse would not be such an easy task but what do I know?

In the end, this one was a page turner for me but very, very, flawed.  I enjoyed it though which is why I’m giving it a higher rating.  And to be fair, I do think Ryan tried with the character development, while I didn’t care for Fibby, it was refreshing to see such a twisted YA character for the narrator for once.

Overall Rating: A B-.  Read this one, but know it’s going to be flawed and there is really one decent character in the book.