Ink and Ashes

by Valynne Maetani

[nannah]

DNF @ 11%

I just couldn't do it. The writing was awful -- who's giving out all these awards to books with terrible writing? --> "'It's still hard, isn't it?' His voice fell at the end as if it was more of a statement than a question.'" [...] "'Yes?' he sang as if innocent."

The whole book (I assume, if it's all written like this) is told rather than shown, as if young adults aren't smart enough to figure out what's going on.

The book also uses such coincidental things to push the plot forward:
The protagonist mentions how she played soccer, and her dad made her learn martial arts as a way to cross-train. Every Saturday he trained her and her brothers ... but not ... Today.
"Even if he had other things to do, he always made sure we practiced for an hour or two. But today, he seemed to have completely forgotten. Why would he have offered to pick up energy bars when Mom was at the grocery store anyway?"

?? It's like a game of clue or something; it doesn't seem organic and it's there just to make sure the plot points fall into place. There's also an extreme imbalance of the protag falling into inner monologue about just about anything. She'll see an apple? Somehow there's a story about apples in her childhood or something.

Also, dang, that fatphobia. In two pages of introducing her older brother the author managed to let us know he was "large, lumbering, etc." in four different ways. We get it! He's fat and you need to make a huge ol' point of it, especially compared to everyone else who's skinny! "Parker gave her hip a gentle bump and put an arm around her, eclipsing her slight frame." Move on. Let fat characters (and people) just exist, please.

Between all that and an otaku (cringe) and the main characters forming "APM"s --> "Axis Power Meetings", I was out. On the page they literally admit they knew what the Axis powers were, but thought it was still a cool name, so ... whatever, right?

And this is geared towards young adults. In this current day and age. Yikes.
The APM was the last straw.