I’ll say right up front that not only did I not finish this book, I barely even started it. It’s an experimental book; the experiment did not work for me because I failed to grasp hold of a narrative and I cannot remain interested in a book without narrative.
The book is told from two intertwined points of views, Sam and Hailey, two teenagers. The idea is that you read eight pages of one – and it doesn’t matter which one you start with – and then flip the book over and read eight pages of the other, and alternate like that through the whole book. Their story is told in fragments and bursts, overlapping each other. I can’t really say what the story was going to be about; not even the blurb can tell you.
In the few pages I read, I could see the author was going to play games with the POVs: for example, Sam, in typical teenage boy fashion, thinks Hailey is impressed by him; after eight pages, flip to Hailey and find out that she, in typical teenage girl fashion, thinks he’s a loser. I like that, but it wasn’t enough.
For me, it was very difficult to tell what was going on in the twenty or so pages I tried to read. As I said, it’s fragmented, poetic: my tendency is to start skimming until I can find something I can attribute meaning to, and then go back to re-read the earlier bits with the new knowledge, but skimming makes it even less likely I’ll understand it, and then there’s no way to hook in at all.
If I didn’t have so many other books to read, then maybe I could have approached this with more patience. I do like to see innovation in literature; however, this one didn’t work for me. Maybe it will work for you.
