Review: New Boy by Tracy Chevalier

Image from Goodreads

Blurb from Goodreads; 
Arriving at his fifth school in as many years, a diplomat's son, Osei Kokote, knows he needs an ally if he is to survive his first day so he's lucky to hit it off with Dee, the most popular girl in school. But one student can't stand to witness this budding relationship: Ian decides to destroy the friendship between the black boy and the golden girl. By the end of the day, the school and its key players - teachers and pupils alike - will never be the same again. 

The tragedy of Othello is transposed to a 1970's suburban Washington schoolyard, where kids fall in and out of love with each other before lunchtime, and practice a casual racism picked up from their parents and teachers. Peeking over the shoulders of four 11 year olds Osei, Dee, Ian, and his reluctant girlfriend Mimi, Tracy Chevalier's powerful drama of friends torn apart by jealousy, bullying and betrayal will leave you reeling.

This book is a retelling of Othello, set in a 6th grade class in 1970's Washington D.C.. You might think that's an odd setting for any Shakespeare retelling, and you're right. The whole thing just did seem to fit.

I mean the characters were well done, in that they were the typical roles you'd find on any playground. The popular kids, The Loud Girl, The Perfect Girl, The Quiet Girl, The Rich Boy, The Bully, The Sidekick. But as the story progressed these kids got way too adult. The plotting that went on, and the over the top sexual stuff. Maybe things were way different when I was in 6th grade in the late 90's, or maybe I hung out with a different group of people but stuff like this just did not happen. I think it's simply that Shakespeare's work is meant for and written about adults for a reason, and children are supposed to tell these kinds of stories, no matter what time period it's set in. I just can't buy into kids being in this story and having the adult motivations and lines of thought that they did in the book.

By the end of the book I was only reading because it's so short and I felt like I had to finish it. It just didn't work. 1 star- Do not recommend.

Note: I received a free copy of this book through Blogging for Books, in exchange for an honest review.

ARC's

I've a few ARC's (ARC means Advanced Reader Copy, I was so confused till some one at the bookstore told me that) over the years. When I was working at Border's we got a them quite often, mostly just so we could recommend them. Recently, I signed up for a spot on an author's ARC team. The first 25 people to respond got a spot. I probably shouldn't have signed up since it was an author I'd never read, but I've signed up for a lot of ARC teams and never gotten a spot so I expected this one to be the same. A couple of days later I got an email that the first ARC book was being released to the ARC team, which apparently included me. I was surprised and so happy that I got to read a book and review it before it was released! I downloaded the book and sat down to read it right away since The Toddler was napping.

The prologue was terrible. The story was okay but the writing was awful. There were parts that contradicted each other, odd word choices, sayings that didn't make any sense. I thought for sure the rest of the book couldn't be like that so I kept reading. How could a book have made it all the way past editors and beta readers with such horrible writing all the way through? I was wrong. I read up until a horribly written but very detailed rape scene in chapter five and at that point I just threw my kindle down. This book was bad. So very very bad. But I was an ARC Team member. The author was waiting for my feedback. She wanted a link to an Amazon review. How could I give this a review? In the first ARC team email the author had asked that we email her first if we felt we had to give a bad review so I did. I tried to not sound like a horrible bitch, and say a few good things with the amazingly huge heap of bad but I'm afraid I came off a bit condescending. I really didn't mean too but it seemed like there was no way this book had been on the desk of a competent editor at some point and I may have suggested she look into a line editor. It's been bothering me a lot though. I know it's just my anxiety, but I can't stand the thought of someone being mad at me, or hating me, even a stranger on the interwebs. I feel like I have an obligation to post a review though. For some reason there are people giving this book 4 and 5 star reviews and I feel like readers need some warning of what they are buying, but I don't want to go on a smear campaign against this author either, not that anyone is paying attention to my opinion, but still. I've decided to just leave it at emailing the author. I'm sure she'll remove me from her ARC team but that's probably for the best. I feel bad for having to tell her how bad it was but I couldn't lie.

In other news; I've read two books for the RMSC! I'm working on three and four. If I can keep up this pace I'm going to blow the goals out of the water, we'll see how it goes though. I also have decided to put a link to the blog on my Goodreads profile. I only have like 11 friends on Goodreads so I don't think it will get much attention if any but still its a step towards sharing the blog, which my anxiety doesn't want me to do. Anxiety says 'Your blog sucks! Delete that shit!' and maybe if does suck but I'm enjoying writing so suck it anxiety.