Dare Truth or Promise by Paula Boock
In short, this a novel about two girls who meet and fall in love. It's pretty straightforward from there.
So it seems that I’m alone in not liking this book since all of the reviews I’ve come across are overwhelmingly positive. Since I’m trying to read 100 LGBT books by the end of next year this one was high up on my to-read list because it came so highly recommended. Unfortunately, I found it incredibly dry. My biggest problems consist of:
- The characters. Louie and Willa are caricatures cut out to walk across stage and play their little game. There are only a few distinguishing characteristics and these things are few and far between. At most they are two teenage girls whose personalities could be summed up using one or two words each.
-The relationship between the characters. This is one of my biggest pet peeves in a novel that centers around a girl-meets-girl, boy-meets-girl, or boy-meets-boy story. So suddenly two characters come across each other and they each find the other one interesting/attractive/insert your own adjective here. Happens all the time, right? Unfortunately, I hardly ever see a relationship develop with intrigue or finesse. Instead, the relationship sort of falls out of the sky and the two characters are saddled with it.
This is what happened with Dare, Truth, or Promise. There is hardly any in-between time for when Louie and Willa meet and when they are suctioning each others faces and declaring their undying love for each other.
-The lack of atmosphere. One of my favorite things about a book is getting familiar with a world (be it a fantastic world with dragons and unicorns or just a small town in modern day America) outside of my own. Dare, Truth, or Promise had a setting, don’t get me wrong, but I hardly ever got a feel for what was happening outside of Louie and Willa. Nothing outside of the two girls felt defined. Does this make any sense? Or have my explanations gone wonky?
-The one track story. This is just a personal pet peeve of mine but I hate when books focus on one central subject and don’t allow room for outside themes or activity. This book had maybe one subplot going for it. Anything else with the potential to be a subplot was just glossed over.
-Spoiler: Louie’s lack of interaction with her mom. Okay, so Louie’s mom finds out about her daughter’s lesbian relationship and she more or less goes postal. We don’t see a lot of this, though, because any confrontation between Louie and her mother is skimmed over. In theater there is a rule: if you introduce a gun in the first act then by the end of the play it must go off. So shouldn’t something like apply to fiction as well? If you introduce a volatile secret (in this case, a relationship) in the first few chapters then shouldn’t it come into conflict by the end of the book?
There was one scene that I liked so I didn’t give this book just one star. Still, I couldn’t get on board with the legions of praise-givers. Hopefully my next LGBT reads will prove more fruitful.