About Me

My photo
A-red-lipstick-wearing bibliophile extraordinaire. Word nerd & Joss Whedon fangirl; Literature lover & book reviewer. Lady Libertine; Tea collector; Potterhead.

Wednesday 6 February 2013

Review: UnEnchanted

Meet Mina Grime.
Mina is a unpopular, she's so uncoordinated she makes Bella Swan look like a master of grace and she's unlucky (although, not in the way she thinks).
After a field trip goes awry, Mina ends up almost killing (and then saving) the boy of her dreams, and is consequently thrust into the world of popularity. Her new found limelight brings an old family curse into play, for Mina is a descendent of the brothers Grimm and is destined to fight the evil stories that are trying to kill her.

Every once in a while, I get a reading request that is a bit worrying. This was one of those times, as a free e-book though I can't really complain, but I will anyway. (I should probably mention I read this with a friend and we discussed our reactions in real-time.)*

I really liked the idea of a curse like this, as darker sides of fairy tales is a personal favourite of mine. There is nothing in this world I hate more than a good idea that is poorly executed.

You know something is wrong when the characters are so flat and unlikable, not even borrowing obvious traits from other book series help plump them up. (We even had a Snape moment, you guys. Turns out Mina's father James is a no good, arrogant, imbecile too!)
We also have the two polar opposite boys to help form the love triangle: the brooding misunderstood rich kid, and the quintessential leather jacket clad, motorcycle riding, bad boy. He's also brooding. The minor characters are no different, really. Same unlikability, in different bodies. It almost doesn't need to be thought about.
They all have their roles, and stick to them rigidly, the boys spend their entire time saving the damsel in distress, fighting with each other and mooning over their emotionally unavailable object of affection. Even Mina was tiresome for someone who, for a lack of better phrasing, should have been learning to kick some serious ass. She spends most of her time being stubborn, unreasonable and feeling ridiculously inadequate to every single person around her. It was entirely unbecoming, I was half hoping she'd get killed off and we'd be allowed to see her mute younger brother get a piece of the action.

The character jumping in this book was the least of my problems, although trying to figure out who's point of view I was looking at did leave me with a migraine. The plot and writing style ranged from dire to unintentional hilarity and I found I was trapped between a rock and a hard place (or in this case, grimacing and howling with laughter). You don't have to be a master of grammar to understand the basic concepts, the amount of typos borderlines worrying. My all-time favourite incident being, "Mina, they're coming over her!"  The plot holes were many and the editing was questionable at best- I was led to wonder if anyone had actually proof read it at all.
Where it lacked in grammatical correctness, it all but made up for it in the sheer abundance of misinformation and general ridiculousness. A special mention here goes to the casual racism in the form of Mr and Mrs Wong, who not only own the Chinese restaurant underneath Mina's apartment but are guilty of more spoonerisms than William Archibald Spooner himself.

There was so much wrong with this book, that I ended up loving it for all the wrong reasons. It is, in short, an exquisite guilty pleasure and I just can't wait for the sequel. I hope is just as irksome as this one. If you want to join in on the fun, you can download the e-book here.

Rating: ★★

*Thanks for making all the live reaction readings bearable, Emma!


No comments:

Post a Comment