Your Perfect Year

This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader as part of a Quick Takes Catch-up post, emphasizing pithiness, not thoroughness.

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Ugh. A few years ago I was in the middle of a “I need to read more ‘General Fiction” kick and saw an advertisement (or something) for this—it wasn’t on a blog, I know that much. Something about the description appealed to me, and I got a good Whispersync deal, so the audio and ebook versions sat around since. I wanted to go through the ebook rather than the audio initially—but never seemed to find the time. But I finally broke down and just wanted to get it finished, it’s been calling to me for so long.

I should have held off a little (or a lot) longer. This book didn’t work for me in just about every imaginable way. Within a chapter or two you could see how the whole thing was going to go—including the “big surprise twist”. This is fine if the ride’s enjoyable. But it really wasn’t. The comedy wasn’t all that funny. The drama felt contrived (it’s fiction—all of it is contrived, I realize—but there’s “contrived” and there’s “feeling contrived”). The introspection and self-discovery really didn’t click for me, either.

The best thing I can say about it is that the arc of the publisher of only captial-L Literature and noteworthy Non-Fiction discovering the value and appeal of popular fiction was pleasant (and I just spoiled that…oops). A little self-serving for the writer of popular fiction, but I’m not going to criticize that.

Just pass on this one.