Wave Length

by A J Betts

[Joséphine]

Initial thoughts: Wavelength's subject matter is one many can relate to: stressing out over the need to study. Oliver so badly wanted to get into his choice university course and so set his mind completely on studying. The trouble was that no matter where he went, he came across a lot of distractions, so he packed up for his one week break to spend it at his father's place. Little did he expect even more distractions.

The thing aboutWavelength is that it isn't terribly interesting. To me it read like a story a friend would've told me about their "disastrous" term break during which they didn't manage to accomplish their academic goals. And whenever that happened, I'd sympathise for the the first three minutes, after which I would switch off. Spending every waking moment of my vacation studying never was a primary concern to me. And since complaints about not studying enough surrounded me so many years through school and university, Wavelength appealed to my memories but not in a good way.

There wasn't much about the individual characters that caught my attention either. The ending of the book was fairly abrupt too. While I don't mind open endings, I do want to see how particular event impacted the characters. How did they respond? Did they change as a result? I didn't see that in Wavelength. As much as the title of the book is Wavelength, the ups and downs of the plot and the characters remained decidedly flat for me.