Demon in my View

Demon in my View is narcissistic, overindulgent, and immature...
Wow! That is harsh Bookworm!
I know. And it pains me because expected so much from this series, but this book is so awful I will be taking the next two off my To Read List. Honestly, if I could I would return them. I probably will end up giving away this whole series.
Warning…I am going to be quite frank in this review, and perhaps at times painfully honest. Which, because I know how hard it is to get uncomplimentary reviews, pains me to do.  So I am sorry if you really liked this book, but I review books honestly and this was how I felt.

****Spoilers****
Let’s start with my claim that the writing was indulgent. Atwater-Rhodes forces her vocabulary. Young writers often do because they are learning new words and think that bigger words are better, more impressive. And used in the correct manner, sparingly, so they sound realistic, yes, they are better. ‘Gargantuan’ is much more exciting than ‘big’. But larger, more “adult” sounding words shouldn’t be used at the expense of a character’s believability. Writing for the sake of the words is bad writing. Take the first sentence of chapter one:


“The black oblivion of sleep was shattered by the caterwauling of some singer on Jessica’s clock radio.”
Immediately turned off. “The black oblivion” is…pushing it, but would have been fine if she hadn’t included “caterwauling”. But she did. As Atwater-Rhodes is 15 at this point I forgive her for not having the training to know not to write this way. I do not, however, forgive her editor. Who the heck looked at that line and thought it had a publishable first sentence?
As for narcissistic, Jennifer is a Mary Sue character. It is my opinion that Mary Sues should never be published. Mary Sues do not belong in literary fiction. In fan fictions maybe, though I refuse to read Mary Sue Fanfics, but otherwise no. Atwater-Rhodes inserts herself so her main, male vampire can fall in love with her. Excuse me while I empty the contents of my stomach. Horrid.
But wait! It gets better! (Sarcasm. Heavy sarcasm) Jennifer looks at herself in the mirror as she tries to figure out why no one wants to date her, after all, she has a “body to die for”, a perfect complexion, and dark, beautiful hair. *Eye roll* Most people don’t look in the mirror and see perfection. It is completely unrealistic and straight out of the Mary Sue Guidebook.  You think I snark, but one probably exists. Oh dear, it does: The Official Mary Sue Manual.
Moving on…to immature. I won’t even bother complaining about the flat, mostly unlikeable characters. I did that in the last post. But I will address that all of her characters are immature as well as flat. Even the vampire who is hundreds of years old.

Conceivably I can see very young vampire lovers liking this. But if you like well-written novels with believable characters, then this book will irritate you just as much as it did me. My first reaction was to give this half a star, because of the Mary Sue element, but that seemed far too mean and I have already been rather harsh in this blog. So in pity, I will give it a full star.

How did you feel about this book? What would you like to see me read next?