The Unnoticeables

by Robert Brockway

“Hey, me too!” Marco said, so earnestly that it took me a minute to realize he was joking. He stayed deadpan until I laughed, then joined in.

The characters, dialogue, humor, situations and overall writing are painfully juvenile. It's like I'm reading a teen's first attempt at a book.

Traffic lights swung past us like paper lanterns in a hurricane.

Terrible

Somebody was holding my shoulders, pulling me out of Marco’s Mercedes. I threw up on my dress. I wrenched out of the stranger’s grasp. I fell on my ass in the street. I kicked at the car with my still-clumsy limbs. I tried to struggle to my feet to gouge out Marco’s goddamned eyes—I keep my promises—but my body was a few seconds behind my commands.

No editor had anything to say about this paragraph?

all the anger ebbed out of me like blood from a wound.

Terrible

That thunderstorm ambushed us like a mugger from a dark alley.

You need to go back to metaphor school.

Me and Randall were taking turns trying to think up new ways to fill the time.

Seriously? Is that the theme of this book? You guys just defeated supernatural monsters and now we cut to more juvenile dithering? This mix of punk and monsters is too vague and lackadaisical to do it for me.

She laughed like a chandelier swaying in the breeze from an open window. God damn it, I’m so horny I’m becoming a poet.

A terrible poet maybe

“Are you kidding me? Fuck that guy. Randall is probably holed up in some suburban pleasure palace out on Long Island, being serviced by busty wenches who want to use his dong to piss off their daddy.”

No concern about all the monsters?

“Is she a black girl? White girl? Chinese or something? What do you think, Jezza? You were showing off how hot she is to me a second ago. What color is her skin?”

I like this story concept, but it's managed so poorly that it just doesn't translate right

“Quiet. I don’t know if they can hear us or if they’re even still after us, but keep it down until we get mobile.”

This writing leaves it incomprehensible where everyone is or what the stakes are.

We’re trying to find my friend.”

Weak motivation

Gus grabbed for Wash again, who was still too stunned to move. He just blinked at me, an expression more of curiosity than pain, like he was just really intrigued by the mystery of his own bashed-in head. I huddled up against Jezza, put both feet on Wash’s side, and shoved him out of the booth before Gus could get a grip on him. I rolled myself under the table right after, and hit the beer-soaked concrete with both elbows. It sent lightning bolts of pain up the long bones in my arms. “What do I do? What do I do?!” Jezza screeched from somewhere above. His voice cracked and wobbled. “Run, dipshit.”

The action writing: nonexistent pacing, clunky timing, incomprehensible blocking

I put my hands beneath the lip of the table and heaved. It tipped up between the two of them, giving me just enough of a window to grab Jezza by the sleeve and yank him into the crowd with me.

Like this action: it makes zero sense. I challenge you to picture it in your mind.

My brain refused to latch on to the images I had just seen. It did not process the limbs bent at broken angles. The viscera that used to be a girl with a teardrop tattoo. The smell of blood and cum and cocaine in the air. My mind went looking for logical explanations: This is Punk’d. This is Candid Camera. This is some kind of elaborate, high-budget prank somebody is pulling on me. I’m Michael Douglas in The Game. Somebody is The Game-ing me.

Why are we still doing this after watching broke neck Marco crabwalk up walls? Shouldn't Her disbelief be suspended already?

They weren’t flat at all; the tip of each side of the fence was lined with thick, shining, six-inch-long steel blades running parallel to the ground. I’d never seen anything like it.

Huh? This description makes no sense. What is "the tip of each side" of a fence?

What’s the point, without Jackie?

This intense connection with jackie has been completely absent from the story.

coffee mug with a faded picture of Steve Urkel on it. DID I DO THAT? it tried to say, in barely legible purple Comic Sans.

This coffee mug bit has never landed once