Book reviews

Book review: Take Off Your Pants! Outline Your Books for Faster, Better Writing

Take Off Your Pants! Outline Your Books for Faster, Better WritingTake Off Your Pants! Outline Your Books for Faster, Better Writing by Libbie Hawker
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

There are plenty of books out there explaining how and why you should outline your novel. It always seems like drudgery to me and so I’ve avoided it, for the most part.

As I write this review, my attempt at National Novel Writing Month 2017 is a smoking ruin. Well, that’s not entirely accurate. It was never smoking at all, more a damp lump of coal that never caught fire. In the vernacular of Libbie Hawker’s book, I wore my pants, refused to take them off (commit to an outline) and stalled before I could get anything going. This was also my experience on several dates ten years ago.

It’s been even worse, too–sometimes I’ve committed thousands of words to a story before realizing that it was going nowhere.

Having just gone through another stall-out, I was more receptive to the idea of outlining.

Hawker’s book is brief, more a bookling than a book, but the brevity works as a strength because you’ll whip through it quickly and be able to apply its lessons all the sooner. Hawker also smartly realizes many will read the book through first before going back and using it as reference, noting where to keep a bookmark so you can jump back in when you’re ready to go.

The process she uses for outlines is simple and leans heavily on using the hero’s journey as your story’s template. She provides some wiggle room but there is a basic assumption that you will be writing about a flawed main character (or several) who is thwarted by one or more antagonists, and ultimately overcomes their flaw or at least fails to in an interesting way, completing the character arc/journey.

And she makes it seem tantalizingly simple, extolling the twin benefits of locking down your story in advance (while still leaving plenty of space to be creative once you start writing scenes and chapters) and cranking out a completed first draft significantly faster than the pants-wearing method (she has completed first drafts in as little as three weeks). Hawker references several well-known novels (an eclectic group, ranging from Lolita to Charlotte’s Web), as well as her own work to provide examples of the different parts of the outline.

In brief, she says every well-constructed novel has a Story Core that consists of a flawed character who wants something, is thwarted, struggles to overcome their flaw, then ultimately fails or succeeds. The Story Core is built on a structure she compares to a three-legged stool, consisting of Character Arc, Theme and Pacing. It sounds simple and really, it is. As mentioned above, it’s the hero’s journey, a story archetype that has been around for thousands of years. As Hawker notes, your story will shine not because it’s outrageously original, but because it’s well-told and in a voice that is distinctly your own.

Even as I was still going through Take Off Your Pants! I was imaging the outline of my still-unfinished NaNoWriMo 2014 novel, a story that is pretty solid in some ways, but a bit of a meandering mess in others. Applying Hawker’s outlining methodology, I can see what’s missing from the story and identify entire scenes that can be chucked (goodbye, thousands of words, *sob*).

Take Off Your Pants! is highly recommended to those with a fear of outlining but still willing to take another look at it. I think it’s made me a convert.

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Book review: The Folcroft Ghosts

The Folcroft GhostsThe Folcroft Ghosts by Darcy Coates
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Although not specifically branded as such, The Folcroft Ghosts struck me as a story aimed at middle school kids. It’s short–more a novelette than a full novel–there’s no foul language, the scares are relatively mild, and the heroes are a plucky young sister and brother.

This is an easy read but by the end the experience felt a bit underwhelming. The brevity of the story, along with a curiously abrupt wrap-up at the end brought to mind a treatment for a half hour TV anthology series or perhaps an expanded short story. What’s here is good, it’s just that it all feels a bit thin and rushed, as if written with a short deadline.

I wasn’t bothered by the ghosts not being particularly frightening, as the story is structured more as a mystery, with suspense ratcheting up not because of the ghosts, but due to the folksy homespun charm of the matronly grandmother morphing into some seriously questionable applications of the concepts of family and “love.”

Overall, this is a solid if slight read that eschews big scares for lingering unease. It’s a story that will likely be enjoyed even more by kids around age 12 or thereabouts.

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Book review: American Elsewhere

American ElsewhereAmerican Elsewhere by Robert Jackson Bennett
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

American Elsewhere would sit between 3 and 4 stars if I could rate it accordingly. It’s a solid horror story with a science fiction veneer that could be glibly described as a pan-dimensional family fight come to Earth. It’s an entertaining read, with a strong Cthulhu vibe, though it’s not specifically set in that mythos.

The primary strength of the story comes from its protagonist, the ex-cop Mona Bright, whose past turns out to be way more significant than she could have ever imagined. Mona is tough, resourceful, intelligent and yet has her share of flaws and vulnerabilities, plus a mouth that would make a longshoreman blush. While she doesn’t always make the best choice, it never feels like she takes any action to simply drive the plot forward. It’s refreshing in a genre where all too often people must do really dumb things to keep the story rolling.

On the downside, the novel feels longer than it needs to be, with digressions, exposition and perhaps too many flashbacks weighing it down. The writing is always solid and engaging–though at times the author’s voice intrudes a tad more than I’d prefer–but there is definitely room to tighten things up.

Still, if you’re looking for a story about the perfect American small town and how it’s a front for horrible beings with horrible plans, American Elsewhere will satisfy. Recommended.

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Book review: The Fold

The FoldThe Fold by Peter Clines
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I’d probably average the rating of The Fold to 3.5 stars if I could. Overall it tracks closer to 4, but parts of it bring it down a bit.

This is another “opening a portal to other dimensions maybe isn’t a good idea” story and I’m a sucker for them. The Fold is a quick, snarky romp filled with grouchy scientists, weird cockroaches and quantum donuts.

Anyone looking for a lot of hard science to chew on may be disappointed. The science, such as it is, is deliberately vague, even goofy. The main character is a high school teacher, not a scientist, albeit one with a genius-level IQ and eidetic memory (like photographic memory, but covering all senses, not just sight). Mike Erikson catalogues everything he experiences through metaphorical red and black ants that carry information back and forth, allowing him to essentially treat his mind as a computer with near limitless storage. This comes in incredibly handy as the story unfolds (no pun intended), though Erikson points out the downside to one of the scientists, namely that every horrible thing he witnesses also stays with him as vividly as if just happened.

Erikson is hired by a government friend to check out a secretive government-funded project working on a way to fold space and allow for instant travel over vast distances. Located outside San Diego, the small team of DARPA scientists working on what they call The Albuquerque Door treat Erikson as an interloper, though he assures them he is an impartial observer who would like to see them succeed. They assure him that The Door is very safe.

But things go wrong. Then they go very horribly wrong. Part of the fun in the second half of the novel comes from watching the team grapple with events spiraling out of their control and seeing how they react and adjust (or at least valiantly try to). Without getting into blatant spoilers, the story eventually heads off in a direction that feels more like fantasy, with the science feeling more like magic. It’s a little weird.

The banter between the characters is snappy and the pace never flags. There are no real subplots or distractions from the main event, so it’s an easy read to plow through.

Oddly, perhaps more than any book I’ve read in years, I kept imagining specific actors as the characters. The head of the project, a man named Arthur, brought to mind Morgan Freeman so vividly that I would confidently place a bet on Freeman playing the role in a movie adaptation. Or at least the casting director trying to nab him for the part.

Likewise, the engineer Sasha I saw as Sarah Douglas circa Superman II (1981). I’m not even sure why. The weirdest was probably the inevitable (and, IMO, unnecessary) romantic interest of Jamie, who made me think of Pam from the TV series Archer. Yes, she reminded me of a cartoon character.

The Fold is far from perfect, but the whole thing rolls along so smoothly it’s hard to get upset by what amounts to quibbles. As with most alternate dimension stories, it’s never too wise to spend a lot of time examining the plot, lest you find holes you could squeeze a mirror Earth through.

If you like these kinds of stories and you’re not fussed with the science being a bit flimsy, you’ll find The Fold well worth the ride.

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Book review: Story Genius

Story Genius: How to Use Brain Science to Go Beyond Outlining and Write a Riveting Novel (Before You Waste Three Years Writing 327 Pages That Go Nowhere)Story Genius: How to Use Brain Science to Go Beyond Outlining and Write a Riveting Novel by Lisa Cron
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The “brain science” part in the title might make you think this is a dry, analytical approach to story construction, but Lisa Cron peppers this book with plenty of humor, often painting herself as the target, as she details a very specific approach to outlining and planning the story that will drive a novel. The brain science is basically recognition that humans are hardwired to enjoy a good story, due to how important stories were to the survival of early humans. Cron explains this better than my glib rundown would suggest, but don’t mistake this for a book about brain science. It’s not, it’s about writing a novel.

She comes down hard on so-called “pantsing” where a writer just grabs an idea and then wings it, hoping that over the course of 300 or so pages it all somehow works out (hint: most of the time it won’t and the writer will abandon the story. I can vouch for this by my amazing tower of unfinished stories, now in the running as one of the wonders of the modern world). Instead, she favors an approach where you, as the writer, are always asking questions about your story and its protagonist, the most persistent question being,”Why?”, followed closely by “And so?” The latter is asked at the end of a scene, to prompt the writer to explain how the end of the scene leads into the next. The questions prod the writer into thinking through the character’s actions and motivations before committing to the actual writing. No winging it allowed!

Cron is also an advocate of what she calls Scene Cards where each scene of the novel is explicitly detailed on a card (she recommends virtual over physical), with items like the Alpha Point, the plot (cause and effect), the consequences and so on. She rightly observes that writing software like Scrivener is pretty much tailor-made for the level of organization and planning she advocates.

You might think all of this planning would result in a story that is so predictable as to be rote and not especially fun to write, but Cron notes that there is always plenty of room for developments to grow organically and take off in one of several directions–as long as those directions continue to work in service to the protagonist and her motivations/beliefs.

I’m not sure I could commit to the level of planning Cron suggests, but I can’t deny that a writer who does is bound to come up with a story that is solid and able to pull a reader through to the end. In a way the approach reminds me of bestsellers that are derided for the quality of the writing (Shades of Grey, Dan Brown novels) but are successful due to other strengths, such as the storytelling (I’ll admit to never having read a Dan Brown novel, so I’m assuming there’s something other than the prose that compels people to read his books). Even if you don’t write deathless prose, following Cron’s method may still produce something people will enjoy reading.

Story Genius is made more entertaining as Cron enlists one of her friends and fellow author/writing coach, Jennie Nash, to follow Cron’s technique in developing a new novel. The reader gets to watch the development of this novel’s protagonist (a woman who refuses to get close to others for fear of getting hurt and ends up kidnapping a dog and, well, it gets complicated) and how all the parts of the story–background, supporting characters, motivations and so on, come together to create a compelling whole. I was a bit disappointed that the end result of Nash’s work was not made more clear.

All told, this is a meticulous approach to novel-writing and one that will likely bear fruit for the writer who is willing to commit to the techniques described. Heck, even only following some of the techniques, like always asking why, or compiling Scene Cards in the way Cron describes, will likely result in a stronger story. Recommended especially for people who love plotting.

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Book review: Five Stories High

Five Stories High: One House, Five Hauntings, Five Chilling StoriesFive Stories High: One House, Five Hauntings, Five Chilling Stories by Jonathan Oliver
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The five novellas in this collection all tell stories either centered around or at least featuring (sometimes very tangentially) the Gothic residence known as Irongrove Lodge, with narrative bridges connecting the stories together in a manner of sorts.

Irongrove Lodge is a nasty old place, full of tortured ghosts and malevolence that drives its occupants to madness and worse. Its many victims prove that a good design treatment on a hell house just leaves you with a nicer-looking hell house.

I enjoyed four of the five stories quite a bit, while one of them left me a bit unmoved. The linking narrative also didn’t really click for me and probably could have been excised altogether. The passages are brief enough that you can get through them quickly, though.

“Maggots” features a protagonist who may be afflicted by imposter syndrome–or his aunt could actually be taken over by some alien entity. It’s appropriately weird and yet thoroughly grounded at the same time. At one point Will, the young man who feels he may be standing precariously on the edge between worlds, writes down possible explanations for what he perceives as his aunt’s strange behavior, ending with “I have lost my mind.” The whole thing is enjoyable in how the characters behave and react in the most ordinary of ways to to each other and events both mundane and…less so.

“Priest’s Hole” is about a man who discovers he can shape-shift thanks to a rather special room in Irongrove Lodge. He ends up with an agent he never sees who finds him jobs and it gets complicated and messy from there. The shape shifter narrates the story and frequently apologizes for being melodramatic and stupid. It’s a neat take on shape-shifting.

“Gnaw” is a straight-up ghost story, in which a young family moves into Irongrove Lodge, the husband determined to remodel it and make it a home for his wife and two children. Various ghosts and ghost-like entities have other plans, most of them violent and disturbing. The remodeling does not go well. This is one of those tales in which you will find yourself constantly muttering to yourself, “Why won’t they leave?!” but still manages to keep on the side of the characters behaving believably.

“The Best Story I Could Manage Under the Circumstances” is a surreal trip through magically-appearing doors in bedroom walls and ceilings, in which a young boy is ensnared by a demented storyteller. The whole thing is presented in a very droll manner, as a kind of modern fairy tale, and while it is a triumph of style, I found I didn’t care about the characters and nearly stopped caring about how things would turn out. If this style works for you, however, it may make your socks roll up and down in delight. My socks didn’t really move much.

The final story, “Skin Deep” is told as a series of vignettes from the perspectives of those involved, a format author Sarah Lotz used to good effect in her novel The Three and again uses skillfully here. This is another remodeling-gone-amok tale, in which a May-December couple moves into one of the flats at Irongrove Lodge, where Robin, the younger of the two, becomes obsessed with redecorating the place to the detriment of his wife’s bank account, their marriage and his sanity. The remodeling again does not go well, though the cleaners manage to get most of the nastiest stuff cleaned up.

Given the subject matter of most stories, the tone in the majority of them is surprisingly light, yet with the exception of “The Best Story…” the presentation never feels glib. “The Best Story” is all about being glib and weird and gross (you may not want to pass along this story to someone expecting a baby–trust me on this).

While I would overall recommend Five Stories High,/> the marketing of it is deceptive, as only two of the stories are really ghost stories at all. They also happen to be the only two that really make Irongrove Lodge a significant part of the narrative, rather than something shoehorned in to technically fit the theme of the collection.

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Book review: Cold on the Mountain

Cold on the MountainCold on the Mountain by Daniel Powell
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a solid little horror novel that feels more like an expanded short story. There are no side plots or other distractions here, just a Point A to Point B story about a family that takes a shortcut in the Sierra Nevada mountains that leads them into the small town of Adrienne, a place where evil gathers (literally, all the bad people of the world end up here after they die).

As part of the contingent of “normals” that blunder into Adrienne, Phil and Wendy Benson are forced to work for the “dark ones” to earn a chance for a once-a-year lottery that sees a bunch of people, both good and bad, released back into the world via magic portal. Adrienne is host to demons, serial killers, Joseph Goebbels (“Call me Joseph”) and the teenage Columbine killers who are never mentioned by name and are weirdly depicted as cartoonish villains.

There is some nice tension as the family struggles to both follow the rules and sometimes defy them, knowing the dire consequences of being caught, but the story is almost too efficient as it speeds along to the endgame, the various pieces all falling in place so quickly there is little time to allow events to sink in. The reader learns about Adrienne but it only ever feels like the surface is examined.

Phil, the protagonist of the story, comes across as a decent but ultimately bland kind of everyman. Bo, his brother on the other side, leads a search to find him and his family, and at one point he and his girlfriend come to believe it’s essential to get the local sheriff on-board to make their kooky plan to free the normals of Adrienne work, though it’s never stated exactly why he’s needed. The sheriff is nice enough as a character, but he becomes increasingly non-essential as the story progresses, to the point where I almost felt his alleged need was a deliberate red herring.

The conclusion will likely leave a lot of readers with a “What happened next?” feeling but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Overall, Cold on the Mountain has a comfortable old school horror feel to it. The journey is brisk–perhaps too much so–but the action certainly keeps rolling along.

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Book review: The Ways We End: Six Tales of Doom

The Ways We End: Six Tales of Doom (Dark Collections Book 1)The Ways We End: Six Tales of Doom by Ann Christy
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The bland cover of The Ways We End (at least of the ebook edition) is unfortunate because it may turn away potential readers and they would miss out on a terrific collection of stories by Ann Christy that depict apocalyptic scenarios that deviate from or subvert the usual zombies/nuclear war/alien invasion tropes. Even the author’s notes at the end of each story are a delight, conveying the infectious joy Christy had in both writing the stories and their reception.

All six stories are well worth reading and are best without spoilers, so here’s some quick takes, in order:

“A Cottage of Hunger” puts together a rules-following protagonist, her quite mad mother and a lost teenage girl in a world where the sun is permanently blotted out in the sky. It raises interesting questions on how far some people might go to preserve a sense of order, believing they are doing the right–the proper–thing.

“The Mergans” is a story set in the far future, where descendants of Earth have formed a galactic “Peace Force” that uses its military might to intervene in corrupted cultures of planets colonized from seed ships, mostly by blasting everything to smithereens. The particular culture in “The Mergans” is especially ghastly in its treatment of women, but its liberators may not be quite what they seem, either.

“The Mountains of Five” follows the journey of a 12-year old girl exiled from her village and forced to find her way through a dystopian landscape. I found this story particularly evocative, its spare prose perfectly capturing both the spirit of the titular girl, Five, and her dangerous journey. There is a twist ending of sorts, but the astute reader will likely see it coming. It doesn’t make the story any less effective, though.

“The Bridge.” As Christy notes, this is a quick little “spooky campfire” story and it works nicely for what it is, but it is the slightest of the stories collected here. Still, trolls.

“Rock or Shell” is a time travel story that hints at larger mysteries while never fully revealing them, leaving the reader with a sense that there is a lot more to this depiction of a mist-like realm where thought alone can send someone off into nothingness, erasing them from time and space. Dashes of humor lighten the constant undercurrent of tension.

“A Mother So Beautiful” is probably the darkest and most disturbing tale of the collection. It eschews the body horror of “The Mergans” in favor of telling the story of a sociopath whose mother attempts to stamp out aggression through genetics and achieves horrific success. Watching the world disintegrate from the eyes of a profoundly unstable person is something that will stay with you well after the story ends.

Overall, a fine collection of doom, where some hope or happy endings are (usually) at hand. Recommended.

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Book review: Haven

HavenHaven by Tom Deady
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

When I pick up a book by an author I’m not familiar with, I do it because the story interests me, or I heard something positive about it, or it was on sale.

What I don’t do is familiarize myself with the author before reading, and so it was that I found out afterward that Haven is Tom Deady’s first novel. It is also the 2017 Bram Stoker Award winner for First Novel.

There are things I enjoyed about the story, an old-fashioned horror novel about a monster lurking in the lake of a small town–and the perhaps more menacing human monsters that work and live around the lake–but I found the story dragged on too long and the melodramatic writing was distracting at best and eye-rolling at worst. I read through to the end but didn’t feel much reward for having done so.

Given the reviews and awards, it may be that I’m just not getting the tone Deady was going for. He renders the characters well for the most part, though some of the supporting characters are typical small town stereotypes, and all of them tend to be overly explicit in their thoughts and actions. Subtlety is not merely tossed out the window here, it is packaged up and shipped over to the other side of the world.

In Haven the sheriff is a cartoonishly evil man with an equally cartoonishly evil son. They serve as the primary antagonists while the monster–the design of which brings to mind the car devised by Homer in The Simpsons in how it’s a conglomeration of mismatched parts intended to be the ultimate representation of its form–occasionally devours, but more often just weirdly mutilates and kills people who get a bit too close to the lake.

The mystery is slowly revealed over the length of the novel, mostly by having characters remember key details from the past piece-by-piece as their minds struggle with the wicked effects of alcohol, mental trauma or both. Conveniently, everyone remembers everything before the story ends.

The whole thing is hokey and kind of silly and I’m actually okay with that, but the writing ranges from a plain meat-and-potatoes quality to stuff that would have benefited from a more discerning editor. Observe:

“Shut the hell up. Who the hell do you think you’re talkin’ to, your freak friend, huh, Father?” The last word he literally spit out, spraying the priest with drops of saliva.

Eddie’s body was literally in pieces.

It hadn’t rained all summer, literally.

He was literally doubling over he was laughing so hard.

Women had never been a problem anyway, but after nailing Greymore, they literally threw themselves at him.

Next he stole a glance at his partner in crime—literally.

What if his little sermon had worked, and Jake had gone off half-cocked (literally) to the lake to find the thing himself?

And my personal favorite:

The ground was literally shaking under their feet as rocks rained down.

Not figuratively shaking, no sir. This ground was literally shaking. It was the real deal, shaking-wise.

The point of these examples (and there are many others) is that any good editor would have stroked out that one word without hesitation and made every sentence better as a result. That this was not done does Tom Deady no favors as a writer.

But I will say this–while I found the ending ultimately unsatisfying and the story overly long, I kept plugging away at it, anyway, so Deady obviously managed to capture enough of that old-fashioned monster horror novel thing to keep me engaged. If he continues to write and gets better help with editing and revision, his workman-like prose can only improve. He can tell a story so I see promise here.

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Book review: All Our Wrong Todays

All Our Wrong TodaysAll Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I’m a sucker for certain story types and time travel is one of them. The plots in time travel stories are almost always of the “pull one loose thread and the whole thing unravels” variety, with the science ranging from sounding possible to being completely silly.

All Our Wrong Todays is a sometimes odd combination of extremes, with its tone shifting from being very light to very dark and back again. And again. The science is presented with a veneer of plausibility, even as the framing device (which in this case is an actual device, a kind of perpetual motion machine that produces endless free energy) seems wildly unlikely.

But this is ultimately more a story about a person–in this case a shiftless 30-something named Tom Barren–coming to grips with who he is and what’s important to him than it is an action-packed time travel adventure.

Though there is action. And time travel adventure.

Told from a first person perspective, author Elan Mastai does an almost too-convincing job presenting Tom as an irredeemable loser. A nice guy, sure, but also an unambitious, inept, unthinking clod. Since it’s Tom himself describing these qualities, the self-loathing threatens to smother the reader. At one point I nearly put the book aside. I stuck with it, though, and things pick up as Tom is forced out of his somnolent existence after he screws up time in a big way. As in many time travel stories, messing up timelines is pretty easy while fixing them proves much trickier.

For a first novel, Mastai has done a terrific job crafting an entertaining yarn. Yes, the science is wonky but watching the different players interact across different timelines–including Tom engaging in an epic internal battle with his other selves–is worth the ride.

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Book review: It was the Best of Sentences, It Was the Worst of Sentences

It Was the Best of Sentences, It Was the Worst of Sentences: A Writer's Guide to Crafting Killer SentencesIt Was the Best of Sentences, It Was the Worst of Sentences: A Writer’s Guide to Crafting Killer Sentences by June Casagrande
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book is like the perfect date for a grammar geek. It’s funny, smart, reasonable, and hates semicolons.

June Casagrande does an excellent job of guiding writers through the pitfalls of crafting a sentence, carefully illustrating the many ways one can fumble with just a few words. She offers solid instruction on how to avoid the pitfalls, be on guard for common errors, and generally improve the sentences that form the foundation for all writing, whether it’s fiction or non-fiction.

The book ends with some useful appendices, too, though the first one–humbly titled Grammar for Writers–may cause unpleasant flashbacks to English class, depending on the individual. If seeing “Subject + transitive verb + direct object + object complement” gives you the willies, know that Casagrande explains everything carefully, concisely and with a fair amount of humor.

I tend to intuit what works and doesn’t work in a sentence without being able to precisely identify a prepositional phrase or a nonfinite clause, so much of this book felt like a remedial course. I don’t mean that as a negative, either. It’s an excellent guide and Casagrande repeatedly emphasizes that you don’t need to memorize every rule (or variation of the same), that you can–and should–break out a dictionary or two when in doubt, and breaking rules is completely okay, provided you actually understand the rules you’re breaking.

Overall, this is an excellent and entertaining guide to grammar. I feel like any grammatical goofs I’ve made in this review will carry extra shame for me, having read this spiffy primer.

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Book review: From a Distant Star

From a Distant StarFrom a Distant Star by Karen McQuestion
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Some spoilers ahead but nothing that should detract much from the story.

From a Distant Star is one of those books I bought because it was on sale and the premise interested me. I otherwise had no idea about what to expect.

As it turns out, it’s a Young Adult adventure, something I wouldn’t normally read, but I was captivated by the opening scene from the family dog’s perspective. After that the story shifts mainly to a first person narrative as told by 17-year-old Emma Larson as she recalls how her boyfriend Lucas gets stricken with terminal cancer, miraculously recovers and then, along with Emma, gets caught up in a lot of hijinks involving sinister federal agents, a “witch” and people who are clearly not fans of Ancient Aliens. Or any aliens.

McQuestion capably channels the neuroses and exaggerated, still-developing emotions of Emma, presenting her as resilient, dedicated and resourceful, but still very much a teenager, prone to behavior that seems perfectly logical to a teenage mind and…less so to an adult one. Her utter devotion to her high school sweetheart at times feels like puppy love gone off the deep end, but then again, high school sweethearts sometimes do get married–and stay married.

The character of Scout, a kind of teenage Starman, is handled well. Watching him adapt to Lucas’s body, to Emma and to his human “family” is amusing and offers up numerous opportunities to hold up a mirror on how humans act–usually to our detriment.

The book shifts gears fairly abruptly around the midway point, going from a fish-out-of-water tale to a more conventional on-the-run thriller, but it stays tonally consistent and once the pace picks up it steams along to the conclusion.

I am left wondering if the character of Mrs Kokesh was actually needed. More than any other, she seemed to exist to service the plot, fading into the background until the plot required her again.

Conversely, Lucas’s younger brother Eric, wise beyond his 14 years, felt under-utilized.

These are minor flaws, though. Overall, this is a quick, light and at times adorable read. I can’t say what the intended audience would think of this story, but I found it a cute diversion and a nice change-up from my usual fare.

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