Leigh Dissects YA Fiction: They All Fall Down (Chapters 13 - 14)
Chapter Thirteen
He slides the coffee across the table when I sit down. “It’s really hot.”
It’s coffee.
I don’t like Josh. Does that mean I do like…
We’ve been over this, Dora.
“I don’t know what my mother looks like anymore. I haven’t seen her since I was about eight (...) She’s a lunatic.”
Generic Bad Boy has a mentally ill absentee mother? Cliche check!
“My mom’s nuts, too.”
Because we can’t let GBB talk about something that clearly hurts him without Dora making it about herself somehow.
I look like Natalie Portman to him?
I thought Dora was supposed to be average.
I blink at the rapid subject volley, trying to keep up with him. “Do you have ADD or something?”
What kind of rude ass-
“Held back a few times,” he admits with no shame. “I’ll be eighteen in four months.”
If they’re juniors and he’s been held back at least twice, and he’ll be eighteen in January (this takes place in October), this doesn’t add up. I was also born in January, and I turned seventeen in eleventh grade. For him to be turning eighteen, he’s only been held back once. Or, he’s actually turning at least nineteen but the author didn’t want to have that big of an age gap and said to herself “math, whom?”
And this boy couldn’t possibly be more different from my positive, gregarious, universally adored brother.
Let me guess: this is foreshadowing her brother being involved in whatever cult or other bullshit is going on here?
Also, splooging over a dead guy. Cool.
Probation. Juvenile detention. Mental institutions. A paralyzed passenger in a stolen car. Jeez, this guy is trouble(...)
Honey, he wasn’t in the institution. And for the love of NCT Dream, stop writing mental institutions and illnesses as being trouble for anyone other than those with the illnesses.
“If you just want to… to… share coffee? Then…”
….. They’re still on every... page.
Whoa, he’s good. Electrical, magnetic, combustible. Levi is a human physics class full of energy.
I SWEAR THIS IS MY FAVORITE LINE IN THE BOOK SO FAR WHAT IS THIS BILL NYE IS HAVING A FIT ASKFLDHALDJ
“It’s Kenzie. Or Mackenzie. Not Mack.”
“Really? Mack fits you. It’s unaffected and straightforward and not quite what you’d expect.”
Incorrect splooging is the worst. Someone who trails off half her sentences is not straightforward.
“Trust me, Levi, you have more than one superpower.”
Does he? Does he even have one?
The toe-curling, breath-stealing, tum-my-fluttering sensations of… attraction.
Good writing? She doesn’t go here.
I’m scared of this kid, and so, so drawn to him.
He’s not a kid, he’s older than you because if he wasn’t, how else would he have any authority over you?
Google Translate is mentally challenged.
I have never wanted to send an angry email to an author before. Not through all the racist, abusive, misogynistic shit I’ve read over the years. Not through all the demonizing of mental illnesses. But developmental disorders are where I draw the line. I completely dropped a series years ago because I personally witnessed an author using the R-word as casually as you’d ask someone what the weather was like. Using this as a joke is disgusting and this author should be ashamed of herself. Don’t ever let me meet her at a writing convention or book festival. She’s going to get dragged to the ends of the earth and left there to rot like she deserves.
I guess I liked Mack after all. It’s… unaffected and straightforward and not quite what you’d expect.
My eyes got stuck in the back of my head after rolling them so hard.
Chloe Batista is bragging about how she makes a cool fifty bucks for watering somebody’s houseplants while they’re on vacation, which is just a tacky thing to post to the world.
How? How is that tacky?
Person: I have a side gig :)
Dora: tacky preppy garbage I’M A NERD
Chapter Fourteen
But I still feel as if telling anyone about these bizarre, unrelated, possibly not even real events gives them credence they don’t deserve, so I stay quiet.
I thought Dora was supposed to be smart.
“I…” I see the truck, I think. “I get it.”
Missing: one editor. If found, please return to the seventh grade writing class she disappeared from.
“I want you to understand how much this new social status means to me. It doesn’t mean I’m using you or anything.”
Except… you are??
“Well, she wants you in her Sisters of the List club.” There might be a hair of jealousy in Molly’s voice, but I totally get that.
Um… where did Molly learn this awful name? Consistency nugu?
I should be preparing for State and winning the top prize. Instead, I’m flirting with bad boys and kissing rich ones.
Because it’s not like she’d be able to satisfy both wants with some good time management. But we can’t have that. Then we’d have to pretend women are capable of wanting academic success and romance!
“What’s wrong?”
“Another… one.”
“Another what?”
“Another… girl.”
I just blink at her, a slow, cold agony already clawing at my heart.
“Another girl what?”
“This…”
“This what?”
“This isn’t…”
“This isn’t what?”
“This isn’t how to write… ”
“This isn’t how to write what?”
The reader paused, growing increasingly annoyed with L’s antics.
“This isn’t how to write tension.”
The truck… the truck… the truck that made Levi Sterling run.
I think the editor was drunk while reading this book. I wish I could be the same way.
“I just got a call from Barbara Gains, whose daughter is married to a paramedic who was in the ambulance. She knows you go to Vienna and wanted to see if you knew her.”
I’ve seen some exposition dumps but this is… something else.
“Who? Who died, Mom?” I demand.
“Someone named Chloe.”
“Chloe Batista.” I croak her name.
“Do you know her?”
“Shes…” Oh, God. Second.
And I’m fifth.
I have no comments. I just wanted you all to read this mess.
The book is split into either two or three parts so instead of posting four chapters today, I’m stopping here at the end of part one.
This is a really shitty book though.
Using my irritation as free entertainment? Enjoy my writing as free entertainment, too. I’ve got a freebie book called Epic here.