Chrome Mountain

by Ben Schneider

[moraa]

I really wanted to love this book but too many things were wrong with this book for me to enjoy reading it. Suffice to say, my reading experience was gruelling and I had to make myself get to the end though I badly wanted to put the book down.

This book had the potential to be really good but I must say that it really fell flat for me. Firstly, I found the writing slightly too casual for the serious matters that were being addressed. One instance was when Sonya recounted the moment she considered suicide. The entire paragraph was written with such a blasé attitude that I nearly stopped reading the book entirely. What I saw was an opportunity to address, even marginally, the issues regarding mental health in our society today. Instead this moment was used to show the beginning of her relationship with Levi North.

It seemed to me as though her suicidal thoughts vanished without a trace as soon as she met him. Likewise, I was excited to see some commentary on the issue of rape when the author brought up Sonya’s past relationship with Levi. My excitement, it turns out, was for nothing, because this issue was glossed over and we never heard about it again until the end of the book.

I also didn’t like the large head count. It felt as though there were too many characters, some of which had screen time when they shouldn’t have, and it made the entire narrative feel crowded to me. A deeper exploration of the protagonists’ personalities would have been preferable and their growth would have seemed more believable at the end of the book.

Another thing I didn’t like was the excessive use of monologues. Especially with Terry’s character, they seemed to be more of whining than anything else. Monologues are meant to be used sparingly in books and when used they should add value to the reader’s view or understanding of the character’s thoughts and emotions. Again, they were nothing more than internal whining and it was particularly grating to have a situation described as dangerous, for example, then have a character ramble on about the danger of said situation.

I found the excessive use of sound words such as “RAT-A-TAT-TAT” or “KA-BOOM”, especially their constant capitalisation, highly distracting. It took away from the book and steered focus away from the narrative and onto the words instead.

It also took quite a while for Sonya and Terry to have their first meeting considering this was something that was teased to the reader in the synopsis and clearly pivotal in getting the story going. Their meeting was anti-climatic to say the least and the dialogue could have been a bit more original.

1.5/4 stars because it was a pain for me to get through and I had to struggle to maintain my interest in it.