[Book] Meddling Kids

[Kyle]

SPOILERS: IF YOU DON'T WANT THE BOOK SPOILED- STOP READING NOW

I know this is going to be unpopular. But y'all... it's not my favorite.

First things first- writing a book is hard, and so I commend anyone who writes a book because it's really fucking hard. So I'm not going to shit on this book, because there were a lot of things that I loved about it. But there were also things I personally didn't love. So in the end, I'm not going to say it's a bad book- because it's not- but it's definitely not for me.

And it's a shame too, because the story is actually really, really good. The characters, the concept, the premise and the plot are all amazing. The idea of grown up Scooby gang and their PTSD is killer, and then the adventure they go on is also killer. I loved all of these. Particularly, the author did a great job of fleshing out the characters and giving them real complications and flaws that suited them perfectly. Also, I loved the use of Cthulhu mythology for a real mystery that was equally scary, creepy, but still lighthearted. That's a tough balance to pull off, and the author did it well here.

But I had two main things that I didn't find appealing. The first is that the writing was too overwrought for me. Edgar Cantero is a very good writer. Some of his flow and choices are extremely unique, but also beautiful. The problem I had is that it just never stopped. My pet peeve in a book is when the author is trying so hard to give their unique, particular word choice to every aspect of a scene that doesn't need it. I.E., instead of our protagonist rushing through the door to get somewhere, we have to get a description of their call to action; look towards the door, description of the door itself as it zooms past and then four sentences with four different metaphors for what the door sounded like when it slammed closed. I find this kind of overwrought writing to be really distracting, and it takes me out of the book. And this book had a lot of it. From the narrative devices used to make it seem like it was a movie being filmed, to the trippy similes that sounded good, but made actually no sense- it irritated me everytime and took me out of the book. A particular example was when a character's action would be described in too-clever-by-half terms that were a reference to the written form of the book. "'We won't split up!' Nate italicized." Ugh. There was so much of that. And it wasn't cute. It was kind of dumb.

And the thing is- Cantero's a really, really good writer. But he's like Spinal Tap turning it up to 11. Just stop. Give me ten percent of that and tell your story, and I would have loved this book a thousand-fold more. And you could see it in the writing. Writers write in spurts. So you could tell when he was getting to the end of one of those spurts (where as an author you're more into the "story zone" and not the "flowery zone") and there wasn't so much of the distracting stuff. And that's the butter zone for me. He was into the story and not the clever writing choices and it was fucking great. But then the next chapter would start and we'd get more, "Cap didn't think he'd start the chapter off as the lead in the first paragraph" type writing.

Here's my second thing, and it's more problematic for me. This book had a real issue with the Male Gaze. The character of Kerri- who is the brain and personality of Velma, but the looks of Daphne- is really just a fetish object the entire book. At first I thought there was going to be a point made by that- so I was cool with it. But as the book progressed, there was no point, other than to have lavish descriptions of Kerri's hair, skin, face, eyes, etc. When anything was described, it was described from the viewpoint of someone sexualizing women- whether the observer was a man or the main protagonist Andy- who was a lesbian. There weren't sexualized descriptions of men. Ever. But there was ample time dedicated to describing the looks of the two main female characters. Repeatedly. And then in the end, the character of Kerri- who were lead to believe is not gay at all- decides to try being gay for the other character of Andy for the happy ending. That was weird and rang false and was kind of gross. The writing choices I can work with, but this point is where it all kind of fell apart for me.

I'm not telling people not to read this book. I'm sure many of you will (or have) read it and really enjoy it. But it wasn't to my tastes.

[Mike]

I can't argue with anything you've said.

The "overwrought" nature of the writing was fine for me... I actually enjoyed that... until the action scenes. Once it got to dramatic action, all that excessive detail and metaphor felt like he was trying to choreograph the blow-by-blow of every fight for the inevitable movie. By the halfway point of the book, I realized I was just enduring the action in order to get back to the actual story, which I was completely hooked into.

I had not noticed the issue of male gaze, but now that you point it out, it is glaringly obvious, and I'm disappointed in myself for not seeing it.

I agree that the forced happy ending was disappointing and felt forced. Ultimately, it was Andy's story, and Kerri's story arc ultimately felt thin and passive by the end. I was cool with it through the majority of the book, but yeah... when it didn't lead to something at the end, I felt cheated.