Soooo I reread Unspoken last night to refresh my memory before I read the sequel and...
Found that a) I dislike the protagonist and b) that I'm not actually convinced of the legitimacy of the main source of drama for the book. Both of these things is kind of a problem, but I'm still going to buy the next book because I already ordered it from the bookstore and I like SRB as a person.
When I finished the book the first time round, I felt a little weird about the characters and couldn't figure out whether I liked them or not and intended to reread and find out. I guess I finally got my answer.
For background, this book is based off the ~psychic connection~ trope. You know, the one where Character A has been able to communicate with Character B through thoughts/dreams ever since childhood even though the two have never met. I actually love this trope, so I was very excited to read this book when it came out.
SRB tried to make this realistic by making their connection not being about ~~soulmates~~ and instead being something intrusive and with consequences and other problematic things. HOWEVER. For the reason for the protagonists' connection to make sense, they had been connected since birth. And therein lies my objection: If you've been hanging out with someone since birth, it's going to be impossible to see them as anything other than a sibling. (According to a psych class I took, if you've known someone from age 2-6, you're not going to be romantically or sexually attracted to them.) There shouldn't really be a will-they-or-won't-they feeling, because they should just be bros. Whether or not they get along or feel the same way about an imaginary friend suddenly becoming real, they should be having petty arguments and a disturbing amount of in-jokes, neither of which they seem to have.
Basically, the author and I don't at all agree on the nature of the relationship that is the central plot point of the entire series and is the only thing that makes the female lead at all relevant to the action in the story. That's pretty unfortunate.
My other objections, cut for spoilers:
• She introduces every girl in the book with how attractive they are to men, and I'm honestly not sure whether the book passes the Bechdel test. Maybe this is just how heterosexual girls think about the world?
• Her need to assert her independence goes to the point of defensiveness. If someone told me to hand an investigation important to me over to the police, I'd scoff and say "yeah right," rather than giving the other person a long lecture about my right to choose what I did, because it's my life and I'm not a fragile snowflake, etc etc. And this doesn't just happen once - it happens every other chapter, it seems like.
• She isn't nice to her friends. Why would you have friends if you don't trust them. Why would you doubt someone you know better than anyone else in the world, for whom you are the sole support system. Or the person who's been your best friend for 6 years and been unwaveringly loyal the entire time. Seriously, were you ever friends with them in the first place? Do you know what a friend is??
• She needs to chill the frack out. She never hangs out and has fun with her friends without thinking about some problem in her life. She never seems happy with herself and is never content to just be.
• Angela seems more like a walking repartee machine than anything else to me (maybe because the only other thing the main character tells us is that she's soooo irresistable to men, omg, and also likes to sleep), but I do like Rusty, Holly, Jared and even Ash. I want to like the main girl characters above anyone else, but unfortunately SRB hasn't written them to be very interesting. :((
• I'm pretty upset that Holly got hit on by Angela. :( I'm really happy about lesbians, but it upsets me a little that SRB's logic seems to be, "If there exists a character that can be attracted to a woman, they will hit on one during the course of the novel." I guess I should pardon this on the grounds that Unspoken is supposed to be a romance, but I've read plenty of romance novels with main characters that have issues unrelated to the opposite sex, that have friends that aren't in the act of having or seeking a relationship, and that can have platonic bros.
Tl;dr I'm not a drama llama and thus cannot relate to drama llamas; I am not a heterosexual girl and thus cannot really understand the ways of the intensely heterosexual protagonist (i.e. a heterosexual girl's attitude towards other girls); and I like to confide in and give endless trust to my friends (bc I trust my own taste in friends), so I don't understand people that don't.
When I finished the book the first time round, I felt a little weird about the characters and couldn't figure out whether I liked them or not and intended to reread and find out. I guess I finally got my answer.
For background, this book is based off the ~psychic connection~ trope. You know, the one where Character A has been able to communicate with Character B through thoughts/dreams ever since childhood even though the two have never met. I actually love this trope, so I was very excited to read this book when it came out.
SRB tried to make this realistic by making their connection not being about ~~soulmates~~ and instead being something intrusive and with consequences and other problematic things. HOWEVER. For the reason for the protagonists' connection to make sense, they had been connected since birth. And therein lies my objection: If you've been hanging out with someone since birth, it's going to be impossible to see them as anything other than a sibling. (According to a psych class I took, if you've known someone from age 2-6, you're not going to be romantically or sexually attracted to them.) There shouldn't really be a will-they-or-won't-they feeling, because they should just be bros. Whether or not they get along or feel the same way about an imaginary friend suddenly becoming real, they should be having petty arguments and a disturbing amount of in-jokes, neither of which they seem to have.
Basically, the author and I don't at all agree on the nature of the relationship that is the central plot point of the entire series and is the only thing that makes the female lead at all relevant to the action in the story. That's pretty unfortunate.
My other objections, cut for spoilers:
• She introduces every girl in the book with how attractive they are to men, and I'm honestly not sure whether the book passes the Bechdel test. Maybe this is just how heterosexual girls think about the world?
• Her need to assert her independence goes to the point of defensiveness. If someone told me to hand an investigation important to me over to the police, I'd scoff and say "yeah right," rather than giving the other person a long lecture about my right to choose what I did, because it's my life and I'm not a fragile snowflake, etc etc. And this doesn't just happen once - it happens every other chapter, it seems like.
• She isn't nice to her friends. Why would you have friends if you don't trust them. Why would you doubt someone you know better than anyone else in the world, for whom you are the sole support system. Or the person who's been your best friend for 6 years and been unwaveringly loyal the entire time. Seriously, were you ever friends with them in the first place? Do you know what a friend is??
• She needs to chill the frack out. She never hangs out and has fun with her friends without thinking about some problem in her life. She never seems happy with herself and is never content to just be.
• Angela seems more like a walking repartee machine than anything else to me (maybe because the only other thing the main character tells us is that she's soooo irresistable to men, omg, and also likes to sleep), but I do like Rusty, Holly, Jared and even Ash. I want to like the main girl characters above anyone else, but unfortunately SRB hasn't written them to be very interesting. :((
• I'm pretty upset that Holly got hit on by Angela. :( I'm really happy about lesbians, but it upsets me a little that SRB's logic seems to be, "If there exists a character that can be attracted to a woman, they will hit on one during the course of the novel." I guess I should pardon this on the grounds that Unspoken is supposed to be a romance, but I've read plenty of romance novels with main characters that have issues unrelated to the opposite sex, that have friends that aren't in the act of having or seeking a relationship, and that can have platonic bros.
Tl;dr I'm not a drama llama and thus cannot relate to drama llamas; I am not a heterosexual girl and thus cannot really understand the ways of the intensely heterosexual protagonist (i.e. a heterosexual girl's attitude towards other girls); and I like to confide in and give endless trust to my friends (bc I trust my own taste in friends), so I don't understand people that don't.