One of the main lessons I’ve learned in my childhood but struggle to remember in my adolescence is one about practicality. Don’t count your chickens before they’ve hatched, we’ve all heard. In my case, don’t get too excited and overshoot! Plot wise, I believe the author of Two overshot and got a little too (haha, bad pun) excited. While the synopsis is intriguing, the execution of the plot fell a little wayward.
Of course, that brings us to the critical part of the review, a synopsis of the synopsis. Two opens with an epic expected battle between twins, Emerson and Parker Leigh, and the school’s queen bee, Portia Flowers. Parker and Portia are battling it out for a certain guy, Randall, when Tim Raines, a dashingly handsome (hey, I’m just making the synopsis interesting) writer enters. And of course, he writes about the two. Just guess which two. AND STUFF HAPPENS. Portia gets kicked out, Emerson gets murdered in the novel, and Tim gets arrested. Are you confused yet? Good. Because I was extremely confused as well. One sentence summary: Two follows the life of two affluent twins with interesting lives, for lack of a better word.
I personally found Two extremely hard to follow at times. While I don’t entirely believe it was the plot, I believe the plot was a major deciding factor in my overall inability to focus on the book. Yes, there was a great idea, but unfortunately it wasn’t done cleanly. Transitions were choppy, what could’ve been mind blowing just made me annoyed, and overall the plot turned out much slower than it should’ve been. At the same time, don’t take my thoughts too seriously. The plot isn’t AS bad as I’m making it out to be. I just love to exaggerate…
Another point to take with a grain of salt is my analysis of the characters. In my humble opinion, Parker and Emerson were extremely irritating protagonists. Don’t get me wrong- I have extremely high “annoying-ass character” tolerance. Parker and Emerson though, they’re not characters; they’re robots designed to annoy the hell out of me. Honestly, there was extremely limited character development, not to mention the fact that overall their actions weren’t consistent with their characters. I felt like the characters of Two weren’t very well thought out. Although I tried my test to sympathize with them, I just couldn’t.
Two turned out to confuse me a little too much. However, I will definitely pick up Karl Alexander’s next book!
Rating: 4 out of 10
Publisher: Rainy Day Books (May 6, 2014)
Source: Netgalley
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Length: 241 pages (ebook)
ISBN #: 9781475604177
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