Existence

So I just finished reading Existence by Abbi Glines, however “finished reading” is a bit too strong of a word for what I did. Forcibly dragged my eyes through seems more appropriate.

Now, I’m going to start off by giving Glines praise for putting herself out there, and putting a good twist on it. To be able to pour your sweat and blood into something, and manage to get it published is a big deal, and it’s something that is hard. So I hope that while you should all know that I admire Glines for going through this, that perhaps she needs to rethink her audience.

The book is about this girl who can see dead people or 'souls,' and then one day she sees a 'soul' who can talk to her. This is new because the 'souls' have never spoken before. This is because this new talking soul is Death, but she doesn’t know it.

So I’m really excited for this book, it’s got a really fresh and interesting plot line going, and the characters (while a little unrealistic in the summary) sounded for the most part really good.

However, that seemed to be where the good parts stopped.

I have numerous issues with this book:

• no proofreading
• unrealistic cliches
• no relation to her audience
• over dramatization of events
• large gaps in the plot line
• creating unrealistic relationships/love triangles
• attempting to relate to a generation that she clearly has done no research into

This book seemed as if Glines was attempting to tailor the plot line to something she thought would impress a YA reader, but because she couldn’t quite relate to the YA audience, it read more like a preteen novel.

Proofreading:

there were some basic mistakes that her editor should have caught, but honestly, this really isn’t something that I’m going to hold against her. It happens, it shouldn’t, but it does.

Unrealistic Cliches:

I really hate when authors do things like this. They write these books as if they’re writing to a middle schooler, and I feel as if writer’s never take the time to honestly take the word Young Adult seriously. Don’t dumb your writing down, make it better. Because I honestly can’t believe that adults believe that young adults still buy into this image of high school that they have.

I don’t know if they think that 'slutty girls in mini skirts who wear a lot of make-up' and 'the stupid jock' and 'the clutzy but cute and smart girl' are things that actually exist, or if that’s their own high school experience, or if they are just drawing from media culture that tells them what they should believe.

All I know is that I was so offended by all of the stereo types she put in there, not because I felt like she was attacking me, but because I felt like she was attacking my intelligence. Her characters were all so classically Mary-Sue that I felt as if an angsty seventh grader had written it instead of a grown woman.

I don’t want that, and I just can’t think that other people can too.

Not every character has to be a cookie cutter. Not every character needs to have tragedy in their life to be interesting. Not every character has to be one definitive thing in order to be a memorable character. Give me depth, but please don’t insult me with such over dramatized pre-packaged characters.

Over Dramatization of Events:

Glines attempted to make every single little thing and decision that this high school girl does seem as if it’s a life or death decision. Which I would be okay with seeing as she has Death following her around, but it just gets to the point where she ends up sitting in bed all weekend long because she’s so in love with this boy that she’s never spoken to before.

Which just comes off as ridiculous and sloppy.

Large Gaps in Plot Line:

Major issue with this. It seems as if because she wants to keep the readers interested, she needs to throw a major event into every paragraph. Which leads to major time gaps.

Like one moment she’s happy and then the next moment she’s sad because two weeks ago something happened, and then we jump forward another week into another major event and the author is telling us information that just happened to have occurred in the time that we skipped over.

I understand having to skip things that really aren’t necessary to the story, but like a prime example is when she 'does but kind of doesn’t but really does' have a mental break down, and her mom sends her to a psychiatrist and then suddenly she’s moving into a mental institution.

Like, what?

It just felt like the author rushed her writing, didn’t want to edit, and instead just said, “Oh, and by the way, let me throw some crucial information over my shoulder at you!”

Unrealistic Relationships:

I just… and this is my problem with most books, and I suppose that I could be wrong in this because I truly don’t have that much experience in the area, but I honestly don’t feel that any of the relationships presented in this book were realistic.

You have the main character and Death falling in love with each other for no real reason given by the author. I mean, a character literally sumised why Death loved her

“You had a lovely smile and a lovely walk and a lovely laugh and you were interesting. You could see other souls and you were brave.”

Which, sounds like a good reason to love someone? I agree, it sounds like good reasons to love someone, but my problem is that we were never shown those reasons. The entire book Death avoids the main character because 'I’m not good for you,' 'I’ll hurt you,' 'You wouldn’t like the real me' and all of this.

He watches her sleep!

There is hardly ever any interaction between these two, yet I’m supposed to believe that suddenly neither of them can live without each other? Even Twilight did a better job of making me believe in their relationship.

The relationships between the main character and her friends (and even her boyfriend) experience the same type of whip lash speed. These characters, within the span of mere days, experience just meeting one another, to an unsepperable love, to uncontrollable anger, and there is never any context given to these emotions with the exception of "Oh, that's just how they are."

Like we were just supposed to believe that this football player who has had several girlfriends and relationships has had a thing for our main character for a really long time?

Okay, believable.

But that I’m also supposed to believe that he “loves” her after a mysterious amount of time that we’re never told and again - no evidence of any connection.

Every other single relationship in this book was exactly the same.

We are told that these emotions exist, but we are never shown.

That is bad writing.

Overall, this book was… forced. I felt like this book was written for money and not because she genuinely wanted to. I mean, you can clearly see that right now, books like these are what’s hot. They are what sell, in about two to five years, we’re going to see a boost in Dystopian/Steampunk literature, and I feel that Glines was really just writing for money and not out of passion.

And I am not saying that there is anything wrong with writing for money, but if you have no passion in that writing, then you are not going to have anything worth any money.

I know this has been a rough review, and I’m certain people will disagree with me, but I get so agitated with these kinds of books because when you dumb down your writing, you don’t do your audience any favors, and this book had and still has the potential to be so much more than what I read. If you are looking for a quick, mindless, paranormal romance read, then I would suggest this for you. The plot, while not my cup of tea, does offer some interesting characters and twists that I breifly enjoyed. However, if depth is something you're looking for, then this is the wrong book.