This girl did not need to fall for the guy
Rachel Sa's The Lewton Experiment jumped out at me from the catalog as a girl detective/girl reporter mash-up that takes place in a town that has been mysteriously devastated by a nearby Big Box store. Our heroine is seventeen-year old Sherri who has landed a job as a reporter for the newspaper at the small tourist town of Lewton where her aunt and uncle own and operate a B&B. It is a little odd that she got the job - it seems hard to believe a teenager would be this lucky, but Sherri is too delighted to care. Then she steps off the bus to discover a boarded up downtown and desolate streets. Lewton is about dead and everybody - even her family - just wants to talk about Shopwells.
(We can call it Walmart, if you want.)
Sherri finds a lot of weird really fast, starting with her uncle, who works at Shopwells and is not at all himself, and her aunt who seems to be compulsively shopping for things she does not need. The newspaper isn't interested in covering the negative impact Shopwells has on the town and no one is interested in explaining how last year's summer reporter went from investigating Shopwells to working for them. Sherri decides to go into the belly of the beast and investigate the store which is where things get all tense and also very funny.
Sherri is a great character; she doesn't waste a lot of time wondering what to do or second guessing her instincts. It's obvious that something is seriously wrong (made all the more clear as the few remaining stores seem to close up overnight), and when she finds herself succumbing to a store-induced euphoria and shopping with abandon, she knows enough to be really freaked out the next day. I liked how she followed clues and broke into offices and went looking into file cabinets and computer files and archives. I liked how she wouldn't let go of the story and I liked how through it all Ra tossed out some really silly moments (what everyone ends up buying is hysterical) and her villains proved to be a bit cartoony. But....and this is a big but....there's one dying romance and one budding one in this book and neither does a thing to help the story. In fact, having Sherri juggle boys in the midst of a criminal investigation just got in the way of the plot and really ruined all the goodwill that I felt for the novel.
When she arrives in Lewton, Sherri and her boyfriend back home, Michael, are on the ropes. They exchange several phone calls throughout the book, all of which slow down the plot, until Michael conveniently shares that he has spent some time with another girl. This gives Sherri the out she was looking for to break up with Michael without being a bad person, something that wouldn't have been necessary to worry about if Michael never existed in the first place.
The local guy, the one Sherri wants to date but can't because of Michael, is Ben who works at a diner in in Lewton and becomes involved in her investigations. Ben is smart, a little dubious of all of Sherri's rather wild assertions but game to jump onboard and get to the bottom of things. The two end up on the road tracking down someone on the inside at Shopwells who might have some information and they end up staying at a hotel (separate rooms). After barely exchanging a kiss, having no discussion of dating or anything meaningful at all, Sherri wanders into Ben's room, says "who needs sleep anyway" and pulls Ben down to the bed.
Cut scene. Hours later the chase for information begins again.
Ben existed, until that moment, primarily as a buddy for Sherri so she wasn't the only sane person in town. He was becoming a potential love interest but with few pages left in the book, I thought that development seemed unlikely. Then boom - there's sex (apparently), the nefarious plot gets uncovered, all is revealed and they end up kissing again in Ben's apartment for the last scene. I guess Sherri could not be happily ever after without a boy, any boy, even a boy she barely met and slept with for no good reason.
I can't believe I'm saying this but the sex scene that barely occurs only in this book has to be one of the more gratuitous sex scenes I've come across in a book in ages.
What I think - and I have no idea if this is true - is that either the author or editors thought romance was critical to the success of The Lewton Experiment. However, none of them wanted that romance to be too graphic so it is barely here, dropped in every few chapters and while it exists, won't get the book banned (for sure). But being unnecessary, it is distracting and clunky. What could have been a cute young teen mystery thus ends up being a roundly unsuccessful YA- wannabe.
I really wanted to like this one but Sherri and her love triangle just didn't work for me at all. Damn.
