Chris Lynch

Freewill

Colton Ray

Not good. Not even close.

The author sets up a really eerie mystery with an amnesiac schizophrenic teenage loser stuck in the middle, yet fails to provide any sort of conclusion to said mystery. I'm fairly certain he just couldn't figure out how to tie all the increasingly bizarre plot points together, so he just had the main character go swimming in the ocean, come to some realization about the meaning of life, and then, bam, the book ends. 

The narration is very obnoxious, with the main character having a near-continuous dialogue with the voice in his head. I swear, half the sentences in this book were questions which became very annoying to read. The premise is certainly eerie, but it's so ill-defined that I couldn't be bothered to feel. I felt nothing for any of these characters: not the grandparents, not Angela, not the dead teenagers, and certainly not the main character, Will, who reads like the poster child for the emo movement. He is lazy, whiny, and drives away anyone who tries to get close to him. Most damning of all, though, he is boring. Reading about this jerk was exhausting, and I did not like him at all. I'm totally fine with reading about characters I disagree with or would not be friends with in real life, but this was almost painful.

Lastly, this book elicited not a single emotion from me except anger that I wasted my time. The story was so lifeless and never amounted to anything except bunches of words on a page.

Sorry I didn't like your book, Mr. Lynch. Maybe next time, try to wrap up your story before ending on a big middle-finger to your audience, and create some characters that talk and act like actual people. And, please, no more question marks.

Freewill

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