Title: Pretty Dark Nothing
Author: Heather L Reid
Publisher: Month 9 Books
Rating: WorthyReleased: 4/24/2013 ISBN-13: 9780985327811
DISCLOSURE: Unlike all the other reviews prior to this one, I have neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a pre-release "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley! I will be reviewing others of this nature in future and will note which ones those are in the review.
This is a new venture for me, but note that I am not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration of any kind for this review. Since this is a brand new novel, I don't feel comfortable going into anywhere near as much detail over it as I have with the older books I've been reviewing! I cannot rob the author of her story, so this is shorter, but most probably still be more detailed than you'll usually find elsewhere!
I have to say up front that I had a few issues with this story. It's a very dark tale and there's a lot of dark with very little leavening. I found this acceptable given what else it had to offer, but I have to admit there were times when I wondered if I was going to want to finish the book! I did finish it and didn't regret the reading, although the ending didn't go where I thought it might, and seemed like it might well have been the ending for a different book altogether!
Perhaps my biggest beef is that the main characters behave all-too-often like they're thirteen years old instead of seventeen. Not that seventeen year olds and adults cannot behave like juveniles, but a break from that would have been nice: a few shades of gray here and there instead of the endlessly stark black and white!
Since this was an uncorrected galley, I don't want to be overly critical of the state of the text. For the most part the actual writing was very well done; Reid can write write! But there were some items bordering on obscurity which caught my eye. For example, at one point, the male protagonist Aaron chases after the female protagonist Quinn, on his motorbike and he arrives breathless! I'm not sure why - unless he was wrasslin' the handlebars all the way! Perhaps he forget his helmet and couldn't breathe on the journey? Was he pushing the bike the whole way?! That just seemed weird. There were one or two other bits like that, but fortunately not very many.
There were some spelling or word-use errors, like 'alter' when it should have been altar (p130). 'stripped' when it seems she meant striped (p137). Then there was the use of this phrase: 'display of PDA' (p143), which decompressed would read, display of public display of affection' which is awkward at best. People seem to readily forget, once a common phrase becomes an acronym, what the original phrase was, so we have people talking about the ATM machine, and the PIN number. That's irritating to me, but it's the way people are!
I frowned slightly when Reid used the phrase 'Texas to Canada' (p246) - as though Mexico isn't a country but Texas is! Texas was a country but it ain't no more, and Reid should know this because she lives here! OTOH, maybe it's because she's a native Texan that she thinks of it this way?!
I also had a cringe-worthy moment with a passionate kiss between Quinn and Aaron right after she's vomited (p159). No, very briefly chewing some gum isn't going to get rid of that awful stench no matter how passionate you are for your loved one! Another such moment was when they had scores of lit candles during a rock concert when the night was 'cloaking the audience in dusk (p192). Seriously, candles at a concert? have we learned nothing form the fires which have killed people when pyrotechnics got out of control? I blogged about this not long ago
This was all made up for with a really weird moment I had on the way to work this morning, I listened unexpectedly to a portion of Carl Sagan's Cosmos which appeared out of the blue when I was scanning stations, and then disappeared - I guess after I got out of range or the thunderstorm messed with the atmospherics or something, and then on break at work I read this novel and the main characters mention Cosmos (p166)! That was a moment! I highly recommend Cosmos.
So onto the novel! Quinn Tailor is haunted by the darkest of dreams: shapeless shadows touch her, teasing and grasping at her with vaporous tendrils, seeking to suck her into something unspeakable. It doesn't help that her boyfriend has dumped her for the school's most vindictive cheerleader, who delights in tormenting and punishing Quinn at every opportunity, and who certainly isn't above seeking revenge for perceived slights - even for seeing nothing more than Quinn talking to her ex, Jeff, whom Kerstin is now dating.
It helps even less that Quinn's father left both her and her mother, that he's used the short time since then to start a new family with someone else, and that he now wants Quinn back in his life, like she's some sort of bronze medal. Quinn is even off the cheerleading squad because her outstanding grades are falling - and who's filling in, in her absence if not Kerstin?
She's no longer "Quinn Perfect", but at least the shadows only come to claim her at night, which is why she's a living wreck, unable to sleep, walking around like a zombie, seeing shadows move and hearing whispers. Yes, they only come at night; until they don’t, that is - until they start showing up in broad daylight, and calling her on her phone. Is this something real or is she going over the darkest edge? She's starting to lose the will to even try to fight them off, succumbing to despair, thinking self-destructive thoughts, fighting with her mother, cutting off her hair....
Aaron collier has his own set of problems. One of them is his apparently unrequited attraction to Quinn (but you and I know better, don't we?!), but that's the least of them. His father is a drunk, still unable to overcome his loss of his young daughter and his wife in a tragic car accident which left Aaron with no memories for several months, and with an unnatural fear of water. And Aaron has a brother who apparently blames him for what happened.
But perhaps the greatest of Aaron's problems is his need to make physical contact with Quinn; but not for the reason you might think: Aaron has an ability to enter another person's thoughts just by touching them. He's pondering how sick his need to touch is, with regard to Quinn, when she faints by the lockers just a few feet from him, overcome by voices and shadows.
While others stand around and stare, Aaron catches her and lowers her to the floor. Of necessity he touches her, and is instantly flooded almost overwhelmingly with her despair and fear. It’s so powerful that even after he has disciplined himself to control this, he has a hard time shutting it out. He's had this psychic ability since his near-death experience in the accident, but he's never felt it like this, and now he's even more concerned about Quinn than he was before.
One evening, he's suddenly overcome by a mental contact with Quinn - when she's not even within a mile of him, much less in physical contact! He can see her despairing, list, in a lake, but he realizes that this is a dream, not a real lake, and despite his hydrophobia, a result of the accident, he plunges in and leads her out. Neither of them is prepared for the massive burst of light and heat and which envelopes them as they hug each other
Aaron has never been able to enter someone's mind before without being in physical contact. Quinn has not had, in months, such a good night's sleep as she did after her encounter with Aaron. But why does she never overtly thank him for his aid? Is she so numbed by the bad taste of that diseased relationship with Jeff that she can't taste the tang of something healthy?
When Aaron calls her the next day, they begin very hesitantly talking about that dream, but they're cut off, and Quinn's phone starts filling with texts telling her Aaron can’t help her. She's on her own. They're coming for her.
Not to give too much away, Quinn starts spiraling down, she and Aaron are on-again-off-again, and Jeff comes back into the picture at a very inopportune time. There's a dramatic chase and a showdown by a raging river. I found it worth the read, although I spent a lot of it confused - thinking it was going one way and finding it going another only to wander back to where I thought it was going. And vice-versa! It's a confused novel, but it still held my attention because I was honestly really curious as to where Reid was going to take this - and she didn't take it where I thought it would go even after she came down on one side of the fence. Color me intrigued! Others may not find her so fascinating. Now whether what happened here is going to be explained in a future sequel, I can't say. I can say that it really does need a sequel because there are too many unanswered questions here.
It bothers me that there is no such thing as moderation in this novel - everything is black or white, everyone is always flying off the handle, everything is maximum intensity, all or nothing, turned up to 11. There's too much drama at times.
It bothers me that Quinn is so obsessed with cheerleading, especially at age 17! I would have preferred her to have a less stereotypical interest in life. It bothers me that coach White didn’t have a thing to say about Quinn's condition after the incident in the locker room where a mirror is smashed and Quinn has visible (although minor) injuries. It bothers me that no one has anything to say about the trashed up locker room! It bothers me that Quinn's father is mentioned briefly in a seemingly important way and then pretty much written completely out of the novel. maybe this is fodder for a sequel?
Quinn is too self-absorbed, although she has way more reason to be so than does Luce in the 'Fallen' disaster. Aaron nowhere near understanding enough given what he knows, and especially in the light of revelations about who he really is towards the end, revelations (I use the word advisedly!) which pop up out of nowhere. The problem is that both of them are seriously damaged people, and in such circumstances, were this reality, the chance that they would do each other far more harm than good is overwhelming. But this is fiction, so we can believe it will go the other way and be the best thing for them.
And that ending is definitely not expected! So I am going to recommend this one because it is so intriguing and offered a roller-coaster ride which I don't normally appreciate in a novel of this nature, but which in this case I was willing to ride. I'm not sure why! I can't say I'm waiting with baited breath for a sequel, but this particular volume I judge to be worth my time. Heather Reid is a writer with an interesting voice and she deserves our support to encourage her to voice some more novels our way.
