Don't you hate it when you hang out, I mean HANG OUT, for your favourite author (or one of them, at least) to release their next novel after you've spent months trawling the bookshelves at A&R, just waiting -- WAITING -- for for said next novel to miraculously appear just so you could hand over your battered, ever trusty piece of gold plastic, rush home, settle down on the beanbag with a packet of tim tams and a milo, crack the cover; hoping... anticipating... looooonging to absorb, to relate, to revel, to read each and every word with the same joy you experienced when you read each previous opus (or is it opuses? opi? whatever)...
... only to find this new one is a bunch of hooey?
This happened to me recently. Love Struck by Melanie La'Brooy is one of my favourite books of recent years. It's funny. It's engaging. It's entertaining. Did I mention that it's funny? I really loved it when I read it the first time in 2003, and I've loved it each of the four times I've read it since then.
Of course, when Melanie released The Wish List in 2005, I'm pretty sure I was one of the first people in Melbourne to snaffle up a copy and devour each and every word on each and every page. It wasn't quite as good as Love Struck. The voice wasn't quite as unique and the characters not quite as likable, but still, I enjoyed reading it -- although I haven't read it half as many times as I've read Love Struck.
So, you can imagine when, after yet another two-year hiatus, Melanie released her third novel, Serendipity (nothing to do with the John Cusack movie of the same name), I was more than pleased to get my hot little hands on a copy of it (many thanks to the delightful Ms J for loaning me hers... before even she'd had the chance to read it!) and set about reading it cover-to-cover in one sitting, as I'd done with it's two predecessors. That was, of course, until I turned to the first page and realised that the two main female characters were named Sunday and Hero... WTF???
Now, being a writer (or at least a wanna-be writer), I understand the almost desperate desire to create unusual, memorable characters that will stick in a reader's mind and appeal to them on a level that is beyond the superficial joy of simply reading fiction. But not even I am willing to believe in a character called Hero. I mean, what in the hell was Mel thinking? Hero? HERO????
With my nose severly out of joint, I decided to continue reading, because afterall, it was Melanie La'Brooy's work, so it had to be at least passable, right?
Errr... not so much. So far, I'm about 75 pages in, and reading each of those pages has been like pulling teeth. Both Sunday and Hero are feeble, two dimensional and ANNOYING beyond all reckoning; the premise is tired and predictable; and the hero (as in the male lead, not the stupidly named female character) is about as appealing as... mildew.
Oh, woe is me. How very bloody disappointing.
And now, I have a decision to make. You see, I have a reading rule: If I'm not hooked within the first 50 pages, I ditch the book. Now, so far, I've already bent this rule by 25 odd pages... and the decision is this: do I continue to read Serendipity on the basis that previous books by the same author were great, or do I ditch it in favour of something that's actually, oh I don't know, interesting????
I'm inclined to ditch, but believe me when I tell you, it gives me no pleasure to do so (although perserving would give me no pleasure either, so I guess it's a damned if I do/damned if I don't situation).
I should have known, you know. I should have known that it was going to be a dull read just by looking at the cover. The covers for Love Struck and Wish List were fantastic: colourful, funky, gorgeous. The cover for Serendipity? Not so much. Here, see for yourself:
Yawn-worthy by comparison, no?
So who says you can't judge a book by it's cover. All too often, it turns out that you can.... sighhh!
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