Mike’s Reviews > Run, Clarissa, Run > Status Update

The last several updates have been incessantly negative, so I'll touch on something I liked: Eliason is really good at capturing how other people feel about Clarissa's being transgendered. A lot of cisgendered people do this thing where they always think of trans people as sad but slightly delusional people, and Eliason captures it really well. (I, of course, am far above that, as I should be. Of course.)

This is so fake. Every word of it. Nothing about this book feels true to life; not how sexual abuse is handled, not how the FBI thinks of Clark, not Clark's skills with computers, NOTHING. This started out alright, but man, it's rapidly deteriorated over the last fifty pages or so.

On one hand, I like that Eliason is showing the realistic effects of running away. On the other hand, the sexual abuse sub-plot still feels very tacked on.

Aww, man, a computer mistake! And we were doing so good up until now! Why would Tony, an experienced computer person, have a password that could be figured out? It's just not believable.

But more importantly, this book suffers from a severe case of Can't Catch a Break Syndrome. Eliason is trying to deal with too much, and she's not able to do it in the depth that she wants to.

Jesus, that was ridiculous. I almost bought the bullying earlier, almost. But that? Bullies don't have political motives. Bullies do not talk, act, or think like people with political motives. I don't buy this bullying anymore, not one single bit.

"He nodded no."

...so, apparently, the book is set in Greece. That probably should've been mentioned earlier.

I'm not quite sure how much I buy this bullying. It's not too over the top to be believable, necessarily, but something about it just feels off.

Also, I like Clark as a character. Whatever problems the book has, at least Eliason's characterization of him is strong.

Hmm... I don't want to say that the quality is amateurish, but it definitely could've benefited from tighter editing. There are lots of punctuation and grammar errors. But it's not too bad, other than that, for the most part.

Also, turns out, it isn't just small southern towns that are filled with assholes. It's all small towns!

After a nine-month delay, I'm finally returning to this book. This time, I actually have the text in front of me, and I know that I can read it, so I'm actually going to review it this time. Yay!

Here I go, reading one of about five YA books to focus on a transgendered character. And it's self-published too, so it gets another 'this books is really unusual' point. Here's hoping it's any good.