Review: No Such Person by Caroline B. Cooney
SYNOPSIS:
Miranda and Lander Allerdon are sisters. Miranda is younger, a dreamer, and floating her way through life. Lander is older, focused, and determined to succeed. As the girls and their parents begin another summer at their cottage on the Connecticut River, Miranda and Lander’s sibling rivalry is in high gear. Lander plans to start medical school in the fall, and Miranda feels cast in her shadow.
When the Allerdons become entangled in an unimaginable tragedy, the playing field is suddenly leveled. As facts are revealed, the significance of what has happened weighs heavily on all. How can the family prepare for what the future may hold?
REVIEW:
*Book Received in Exchange for Honest Opinion/Review*
I honestly closed this book and sat here and said, “What the f*ck did I just read?!”. While the storyline itself had so much potential, their were too many fatal flaws in this book. First off, the tense of the story is all wrong, it does not read smoothly or flow smoothly. The entire story is told in third person and it just…well its weird and I wasn’t a fan at all. I felt like I was reading facts instead of a story. Lander is superior, Miranda likes people, it doesn’t exactly make the story personable and actually makes it hard to connect to the characters.
Next is the progression of the story. As it mentions in the synopsis, there is a sort of sibling rivalry going on, except not really. Lander thinks she is far superior to the majority of human beings in existence and Miranda just accepts that this is her life and doesn’t really care. There is no sibling relationship except Lander turning her nose down to everyone and thinking she knows best. The sad thing is, that even though the end of the book was supposed to be Lander having a change of heart, she is probably going to go back to being her selfish, rotten self.
It’s not just Miranda and Lander’s relationship that is awkward, its the all the characters in the book. Their interactions are all uncomfortable and I don’t know if it is because of the third person writing style or because this author just doesn’t know how to write character interactions. I think the greatest issue is that the author doesn’t seem to truly capture the essence or mindfulness of teenagers, either that or it was completely lost in translation.
BUY THE BOOK:
