Before You Leap

I might have gone into this book predisposed to hate it, as the author wrote an introduction about his writing process, and how hard it is to write a novel. I usually find these kind of statements self-serving and of very little use to the reader. It also inserted the author into the book, and I couldn't help but see “the writer” throughout.

Phrases like “azure sky,” “bouncing around in my head like popcorn in a microwavable bag,” and “selling one-way tickets to dead-end trips,” all seemed about the writer being very pleased with his imagery, and very little about telling a story to the reader.

And the story felt like just another trick the author was playing on the reader. When the first “twist” was revealed and then untwisted (perhaps because the author felt it was too obvious), a twist on the twist was revealed that just felt cheap and unearned.