Review of Final Notice

[natwriter]

[Following is an OnlineBookClub.org ARA Review of the book, Final Notice.]

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1 out of 5 stars

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Finale Notice is set current time or near future. A smart watch is invented that can tell you when you're going to die. It give you your, "finale notice" as it were. Finale Notice covers several different stories of people who get their final notices. It covers several different scenarios throughout the book sort of like a novella. The book starts out with an older couple in California who are struggling with aging, a changing world, and disrespectful people.

I'm giving this book a 1 star out of 5. I'll be honest, I couldn't finish this book. I have large problems with it. My first problem is with the writing style. The dialogue was nearly impossible to follow. It was dialogue line followed by more dialogue. There were hardly any talking tags anywhere which made it very difficult to keep track of who was speaking. Several times I had to count back to who had spoken first to figure out the conversation. There was also no flow in conversation and events. The conversation is stilted and doesn't feel real.

I also struggled with the author's inability to write action tags or even...describe action at all. Instead of saying "he laughed" the author literally wrote "(they both laughed)". I felt like I was reading a script and not a literary novel. The author also didn't seem to be able to trust the readers knew what he was talking about when using general, commonly accepted terms. For example: "Some people know Corgis as the Queen's dogs (as in Queen Elizabeth of England): jaunty little dogs [...]" No sh*t, the Queen of England...I didn't think we were talking about the band. Assume your readers can keep up a little bit.

In one section the main character is walking his dog then he's back having dinner then he's back walking his dog. There was no flow and no setting development at all. I had a very hard time trying to relate to anything happening in the book.

One of the other big problem I have with this book, and ultimately what lead me to putting it down and giving up... There was clearly no research done. The author continually calls gun magazines "clips". They aren't clips. They are magazines. If you're going to write an entire book that is centered guns and gun policy, you should at least research what the parts are called. If you're going to include aspects of police in the book, you should also try to figure out what they're called as well. California doesn't have police inspectors. No one in the USA does. They're called detectives. If you want to call them inspectors, that's fine; but place your book in England.

This book is a very liberal book with a large anti-gun position; which is fine. If that's what you want to write go for it. But I feel like the back flap synopsis for the book is a little misleading because this book is written with an agenda and a purpose: to be a commentary on the treatment of the elderly and to shed light on gun violence. No where in the synopsis is that even alluded to. If I had known that's what this was going to be, that this was a liberal anti-gun, anti-police commentary I wouldn't have bought it.