1 out of 4 stars
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Randy Love at Your Service by Shay Carter is the story of a young man trying to figure out his life. It is set in England in current times. It is a YA novel.
The story starts with Carter giving a succinct background for Randy. This is done in an almost clinical manner and went on long enough I began to fear the whole book would be narrated in this very dispassionate method. When Carter completed Randy’s history and she picks up the current timeline, the story becomes more readable.
As the story gets going, Randy is a college kid living in his father’s home after returning from a gap year living in the U.S. Now he needs to get a job and move out of his dad’s house. His first stop is a staffing agency where he’s hired to do temp work, usually in food service. The temp agency is glad to have Randy because he is willing to do just about any job if the price is right.
After a while, however, Randy begins to become concerned about his future. Not only is he concerned about his future, it’s hard to go out drinking and carousing with his buddies if he is working every Friday and Saturday night. Through the staffing agency, Randy lands a customer service job at a low end bank where the managers must oversee several branches at once.
Because of the bank’s slow business and slower pay scale, Randy quickly learns he’s the cream of the crop. His branch manager entrusts him with the keys so the manager doesn’t have to make an appearance every day. After learning more about the banking and finance industry, Randy decides to study for the financial management exams and seek employment in London.
London is a whole different ball of wax for Randy. His social life doesn’t suffer in the least because his brother is a successful London attorney and he has a few buddies from home that have moved there.
Intertwined in the story of Randy’s job history is the story of his living arrangements and his personal finance habits. The situations he creates for himself are truly mind blowing.
I couldn’t tell if Carter was intending to write a comedy or a tragedy in Randy Love at Your Service. At times I felt like it is a commentary on millennials. At other times, I felt like it is a story about a young man addicted to making trouble for himself. I might have laughed at some of the stunts portrayed if it wasn’t so self destructive. I am still quite unsure whether to laugh or cry.
The book was fraught with dialogue paragraph errors. The standard formatting for dialogue is that only one character has a voice in a paragraph. Carter frequently places both statement/question and the reply in the same paragraph.
I might have chalked the dialogue problems up to formatting problems when going from her original text to Kindle format if it happened only once or twice or if there were issues with non-dialogue paragraphs as well. This was not the case. For this reason, I don’t believe this book was professionally or otherwise edited.
I am rating Randy Love at Your Service 1 out of 4 stars for the dialogue format errors, the confusing direction and the completely empty feeling with which I finished the book.
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Randy Love...at your service
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