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The Edge of Nowhere (Whidbey Island Saga, #1)

Elizabeth George

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Nov 26, 2013 Abigail rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: didn-t-finish

This book was super slow and the characters were mostly unlikable. I'm not a big fan of instant supernatural attraction between characters, and speaking of supernatural, the "whispers" of other people's thoughts were fantastically annoying to read and revealed very little to Becca or the reader. I was going to say I'm surprised at how this author who is purportedly a high school English teacher could write about teenagers in such a boring and uncompelling way, but then I remembered how my high s ...more

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Oct 02, 2012 Christina rated it liked it · review of another edition

This book would be two stars, but I have to add a star for the fact that my expectations were so high. Elizabeth George? I love Elizabeth George! Adolescent fantasy? My favorite! Sign me up! WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG?
A lot, as it turns out. The book was an angst-fest from beginning to end, completely unleavened by humor. And the characters were so flat! One of the things I LOVE about Elizabeth George is how well-developed even the person who stumbles on the body is in her mystery novels. I w This book would be two stars, but I have to add a star for the fact that my expectations were so high. Elizabeth George? I love Elizabeth George! Adolescent fantasy? My favorite! Sign me up! WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG?
A lot, as it turns out. The book was an angst-fest from beginning to end, completely unleavened by humor. And the characters were so flat! One of the things I LOVE about Elizabeth George is how well-developed even the person who stumbles on the body is in her mystery novels. I would never in a million years have called ELIZABETH GEORGE as someone who could write a book full of flat characters. The whole thing feels as if someone told her she had to really dumb herself down for a YA book, and she listened.
Actually, no: the book this really reminded me of wasn't another Elizabeth George novel, but Ysabel by Guy Gavriel Kay. It read like an adult painfully trying to relate to a teenager. Guy Gavriel Kay kept bringing up the adolescent hero's iPod in the bewildered tone of an adult going "why does he need to have his headphones in all the time?" Elizabeth George was writing dialogue like "why do these kids emphasize certain words and say 'whatever' all the time?" And let me sum up 90% of the adult/teenager interactions in this book in parlance the Kids These Days will understand:
ADULT CHARACTER: OMG drugs!
TEENAGE CHARACTER: WTF no.
Look, I'll admit right now I don't hang out with a lot of teenagers. But they have vocabularies! I promise! They know words and have interests other than having "all the moves and be dating that girl from the vampire movies." That's a direct quote, or as nearly as I can remember. And it's as sophisticated a way of expressing the inner self as any of these teenagers ever gets. It made me really sad.
Also, speaking as someone who was, not too terribly long ago, a 15 year-old "chubbette," I can't begin to tell you how much it would have meant to me to run into a teenage heroine who was not a) complaining about being skinny, b) looking at herself in the mirror and observing with satisfaction that she was curved in all the right places, c) not-skinny at the beginning but lost the weight over the course of the book. Unfortunately, Becca falls into category C. I'm not saying that someone needs to write a feel-good book about a girl who is healthy and non-skinny, but remembering how I was as a teenager, I would have treasured any book about anything that featured a heroine who could succeed and get the hero and wasn't thin and didn't lose weight in order to become a worthwhile person. I was disappointed, especially since this came from (and again, here are my high expectations) the woman who gave us Barbara Havers, the utterly unlovely but immensely appealing, unhappy but wonderfully funny, one-of-my-favorite-characters-of-all-time Barbara Havers.
Seriously, Chris Crutcher had more humor and better dialogue in his bleak adolescent issues books than this. And that was kind of what this one was, a book centered around teenagers about horrible issues: the fantasy aspect was almost an afterthought and truly, I'm trying to think right now of what it added to the story and I'm coming up blank. A disappointment overall. ...more

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