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Shoulda Woulda Coulda by Christ Johnston details one night in the life of John Smith, a minimum wage employee at some chain movie theater who isn’t going anywhere in his life and whose girlfriend just broke up with him. An ominous opening, that of a loud banging noise from the fire escape door and the lights mysteriously going out while at work, leads to an incredibly normal shift. Ollie and Hugh, John’s coworkers, already dressed in drag for the evening, greet him at work and try to get him to come with them and get his ex, Bea, back. He refuses, preferring to go home alone and suffer through his breakup alone. Things take a turn for the worse when he is picked up by an unmarked cab after his shift. Lost in the music from his iPod, John is taken to the middle of nowhere to participate in some bizarre ritual that will somehow set things right in the world. One weird turn after another leaves John in quite a state, covered in mud, blood, dirt, and suffering some interesting injuries, I’m sure. He’s quick on his feet though a little slow on the uptake so I question his sanity but who is sane after being chased and captured and recaptured?
His reactions were often comical and strange, lending a bit of humor to somewhat gruesome events, including being partially drowned and stabbing someone with a trowel. His phone added some much needed comical relief in the dark times, bursting into song as various people called him during the course of the night. It was something of a problem, since it gave away his position just as he was trying to hide from his captors and I have to wonder why he left it on. He also didn’t run away when I thought he should, preferring to listen to what his captors are talking about and figure out why they kidnapped him in the first place.
I rather enjoyed the story itself, which is something of a mystery thriller with a bit of comedy. John Smith, though his name is as generic as it gets, proves that he’s got some facets you would never notice if you ran into him down at the local movie theater. Through dealing with the crazy people who kidnapped him, John becomes a man who does, rather than the man who slogs his way through twelve shifts in a row at the movie theater on a regular basis, dedicating his life to a dead end minimum wage job. His development is a bit abrupt, I feel, partially because John rarely expresses emotion at what he has done. This is probably because the character himself was lost in the moment and in wanting to escape that he couldn’t spare even a moment to be horrified or afraid, to a certain point.
He’s a little flat as a character because he doesn’t react and the story isn’t entirely from his point of view, though he may be the hero of this tale. It was unnecessary to state this as the case early on in the novel; a reader could easily figure it out for themselves. Stating the character’s backstories was a good idea; without this information, the character’s motivations aren’t as obvious. It would have made for a better novel had such motivations been shown rather than told. A small summary in place of extensive explanation is a poor substitute and doesn’t lend to a deep analysis of the characters themselves.
Much of my less than stellar rating comes from formatting mistakes, punctuation errors, and other errors that I found within the text itself. I am very much into having a final product be perfect, particularly if someone is going to purchase the final product. A chapter published on FictionAlley can have a few errors because it is available for free on the internet. A story that is sold through booksellers like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or another ebook seller better not have any errors that the average reader can notice. There were several points at which commas would have been useful or necessary and other points where dashes were used in the place of commas, something I found annoying. Some sentences used the wrong verb or the verbs were the wrong tense, or an extra word was inserted. One sentence read, “Tom who-like he father,” using “he” instead of the proper pronoun “his.” Another sentence read, “…people don’t day poof anymore,” using “day” rather than “say.” This is an obvious typo that should have been caught during the editing process. If I, as a reader could catch such a mistake, a beta reader or editor should have caught it as well. These errors distracted from the hilarity that ensued when John was trying to get one over on his captors, from the simple happiness of having a Kit-Kat, and from the outfit that John ended up wearing at the end of his insane night.
Any sort of satisfaction and fun that I get from reading is overshadowed by these mistakes. If I would have bought the book, rather than receiving a review copy, I likely would have voted it even lower because of these mistakes. As it is, the story was quite fun, if a bit brief, and I liked the oh-so-generic John Smith who proved himself to be so much more than he initially seemed. Once I moved past the typos, I could actually focus on the story a bit more but the typos really were distracting. What kept me reading was wanting to know why John was kidnapped in the first place and how he was going to get out of it. Given the length of the novel, I was happy enough to keep reading through punctuation errors to get to this ending, rather than skipping ahead. Overall, I liked the story, in the same way I would be drawn to a story if I just read a summary of it. From afar, it’s enjoyable; up close, not so much. People who like violence and crime thrillers with an edge of humor would probably enjoy this book, particularly once the errors are fixed.
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