Review Detail

Wellllll.... It had promise. But this was no Thirteen Reasons Why. In fact, it's pretty hard to read something on this subject without making that comparison. the s-word was okay, but it did not steal my breath and leave me speechless like Thirteen Reasons Why.


I think it would be fair for me to say had I read the s-word before Jay Asher's book, I probably would have liked it more. There were several things that kind of irked me in this book and I think they took away from the overall impact the story could have had.


First, the lack of capital letters. Man, that drove me nuts. Something inside of my cringes when I see 'i' instead of "I" in a book/sentence/essay. I'm sure there was some purpose for the lack of capitalization of proper nouns in this book, but I really didn't "get it". Whatever the impact was supposed to be fell short. Maybe it was supposed to emphasize the state-of-mind of the character(s)? Eh. I don't really know. Needlesstosay, there should have been proper capitalization in this book. Period. (And I won't even mention that the lack of capitalization wasn't even consistent. Some sentences started correctly, others did not. Names were capitalized but 'I' was not. It drove me nuts!)


The characters were also just so-so. I think Lizzie was the most interesting of them all, and she wasn't in the majority of the action. Angie was a nut case. Jesse had promise, and everyone else was taking up space. There wasn't a whole lot of depth with some of the so-called "main" characters, and a lot of their interactions/relationships were rushed and felt a little off.


I will say the story behind Lizzie was intriguing and heart breaking. Now, her sad story I could believe. It actually felt real (which is tragic).


Overall, the s-word was a decent read that had some gripping moments, but the relationships with the characters fell flat.