The Here and Now by Ann Brashares
My Rating: 2/5 Stars
I guess I just don’t have it in me to truly trash a novel. At least not in the manner currently undertaken by certain individuals. Should you wish to read a review where THE HERE AND NOW is dragged behind a pickup truck for 248 miles on the I-405, I’d direct your attention to a different public service announcement.
I bring up this particular calamity, because I read a review filled with wrath and vengeance that tainted my reading experience. Did I like the novel? No. Would I have liked THE HERE AND NOW had I not read this other review first? No. But after reading said review, I might have been slightly traumatized for a brief moment in my otherwise happy existence. When I finished the story, I realized it was an okay read, but might not have deserved the full-on shellacking it had received on a previous occasion…Sorry, getting back on track and on to the review.
The word repetitious comes to mind early and often in my description of this novel, to the point that I might have to repeat myself to further emphasize a few dramatic points. But that’s okay, as long as I wash my hands first. The dialogue felt more forced than natural, and it circumvented the point a bit too often instead of being more direct and hard hitting. It resembled Elmore Leonard if he had smoked too much weed and fried nearly half of his brain cells and couldn’t remember who he was for long periods of time and possibly had a metal plate in his head and his wife fired up the microwave a little too close to his presence.
Would I call this novel thrilling? I’m going to go with no here, Bob. The pace was too slow for most thrill seekers, and the characters were whitewashed and steam cleaned to the point of a starchy outer coating. Prenna James might have been interesting if she hadn’t been a tad too bland, and Ethan Jarves wasn’t doing a whole lot better for himself. Mr. Robert and Ben Kenobi and Mona Ghali and Andrew Baltos proved on about the same wavelength as our hero and heroine. The romantic relationship felt a bit lacking in the spark department. Maybe electricity doesn’t work as well in the future as it does right now.
Instead of recalling basic pieces of the novel as I write this, there are gaps in the logic and plot that just aren’t there for me. Almost like a hacker deleted random lines of code in the program, and now it’s just not working properly. If time travel were possible, this book doesn’t exactly endear me to that particular experience. Maybe you’ll feel differently, and that’s perfectly okay, but my enthusiasm died within the first few pages, and it never managed to regain its composure.
I received this book for free through NetGalley.