“Where in the hell are you getting all this stuff from?”

25. Twilight: A Deadly Rhyme – Gloria Gonzalez

Angela is being sent to a private school called Glencora since her mother is working nights in New York City at their family restaurant. And Glencora is populated mostly by rich kids and a bunch of teachers who all seem to be romantically involved with each other and everyone lives on campus essentially, in cottages (which is not a word to me that means six people or more can live in it comfortably and share all the facilities).

This story blipped along and did a lot of telling. There’s a ghost and when he wasn’t a ghost he wrote a poem foretelling the ending of the school and someone is trying to make that happen. Is it the cranky old history professor who takes walks in the graveyard? Is it one of the students setting fires and poisoning people and dogs and also running around the school in a blue cape spying on anyone who might get in their way?

Well, the reader will be told that the culprit is deranged and has romantic problems and a whole fantasy about said romantic problems and no one ever actually sees said culprit doing anything in the course of the story, except for Angela, who sees them lighting their romantic rival on fire during the school play in which she is one of the leads. That’s part of the blipping – investigating old yearbooks – blip – now she’s on vacation with her best school friend in NYC – blip – now they’re the leads of the school play – blip – chess championship – blip – everything’s on fire and no one had to practice before the play was on! And now her mom’s engaged and the culprit is dead.

Any number of these events could have been the basis for a fully fleshed out story, like things happening during play practice or someone framing Angela for several things while she’s just trying to get by around all these snobs and yet she becomes the love interest of the cute townie (forgot that happens too). But instead, they’re just mentioned as we keep moving along to another event we’re not really shown that corresponds with the poem. Either this book needed to be way longer or way tighter, I feel like I read something that didn’t take.

 

Duncan and Murderface are wondering how Angela had time for all these activities and how there was enough space for everyone. How do space and time work in this novel? How?

 

Duncan’s Gothic tale of finding a cool four horned ram skull in this painting of her Gothic book cover is a lot tighter than this book.
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