I had a good feeling about this one heading in. It was a staff pick on the shelf at Powell’s, and the deliberately awkward title alone seemed promising. I think I was expecting something like Fight Club meets Ready Player One, not necessarily a masterpiece but an engaging bit of self-aware fiction happy to mess around in somebody else’s playground.
Unfortunately, pretty much everything about this book fell flat for me. I can enjoy a clever plot with cliched characters, and I can easily enjoy a story with engaging characters even if they don’t end up doing much. But TGWCMSWHM doesn’t deliver either one. The characters all have plenty of secrets to hide and even double lives to lead, but none of it adds any real suspense to the story or depth to their personalities. It’s just another thing they happen to do.
For a while the plot felt like it had more to offer, and I was curious about what kind of big reveal might be building in the wings. A little over half way through the book, though, it became clear that whatever might materialize wasn’t going to be the kind of thing that suddenly gave the events of the book a new layer of meaning. After that, I had to drag myself through the rest of the story 20-30 minutes at a time, motivated only by my own stubborn unwillingness to give up on a book that I’d been looking forward to for a while now.
P.S. To be fair, there is a major plot-twist-cum-cliffhanger thrown in right at the end, and it does stir the pot in an interesting way. But I’m too exhausted at this point and don’t have enough investment in the characters to pick up the sequel and see where it goes.
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