My Personal Reviews
All writers start out as readers (obviously), usually avid ones; I have strangely only been compelled to write reviews on amazon twice, one of which was earlier this evening. This led me to think about a whole bunch of random shenanigans that I would like to share with you, as I believe its very relevant to my readers.
....The novels that I find most intriguing are usually in the young adult science fiction genre. This includes, but is most certainly not limited to:
-The Hunger Games
-Uglies
-Matched
-Divergent
-Ender's Game
-Harry Potter
-The Giver
-Murder Genes
-okay, I could go on and on... but these are the first that come to mind essentially, and definitely the most recent reads...
Interestingly enough these books all have A LOT in common: overly controlling government, unique and strong central character (usually first person perspective but not always), violence violence violence, super unique back stories and settings that get me all confuzzled and excited, hormone-raging moments, mind-stretching psychological depth, super awesome characters that you fall in love with AND crazy ass plot twists and secrets that make you go "WHAAAT?!" more times than I can count on two hands.
So ya, ^ that's the gist of what I enjoy in a novel... I'd like to think that Incompatible might be able to inspire some of these same themes (of course quite a few clearly did not appear in the tale - violence for instance), and if I were to be honest with myself Incompatible is a tame novel to say the least. But this I find OK. This is what I am comfortable writing right now, what I'd be comfortable having my younger sister read... not too much violence and no sex.
And ultimately this is what I've found so intriguing about my review-writing-endeavors. The two novels I've written reviews for are: Murder Genes and 50 Shades of Grey. Sex is the predominant theme in 50 Shades, with a twinge of violence here or there, but not so much that I'd say "Yes, this is definitely a violent novel!". Murder Genes IS violent, a novel I would label "violent" in the tags at the bottom of amazon.com; sex is not a constant occurrence but it happened often enough for me to deem said story inappropriate for teenage audiences, especially combined with the violent nature of the sex.
Why did I write reviews for these novels, then? They were underrated. The readers who wrote reviews for these tales had such obvious bias that I felt compelled to give a more accurate depiction of my thoughts on the story, without giving away the plot like MOST reviewers do (annoying!). I'd like to go into more detail because the circumstances under which I wrote the Murder Genes review are significantly different than the circumstances that occurred which led me to writing the 50 Shades review this evening.
--warning... before proceeding, keep in mind I do not recommend either of these tales for the faint-hearted, no one under the age of 18 should read these AT ALL, they are not something I would personally vouch for as appropriate for my younger sister (who is in high school, mind you) and honestly have no correlation to INCOMPATIBLE - as mentioned above my novel is very tame (which can be both good and bad, depending on your perspective)--
Murder Genes I loved. It deserved every star out of the 5 that I gave it! I researched the author because I found his ideas intriguing. I've always LOVED the nature vs nurture debate and found the perspective given in the novel to be very thought provoking rather than cut-and-dry "this is how it is and what I think". It seemed the author similarly had qualms of his own about how much nature and nurture play a role in an individual's actions and lifestyle. This being said, I contacted the author on his blog and agreed with a very positive review that he decided to share with his audience. He urged me to write my own, so I did.
On the other hand...
50 Shades of Grey I didn't love... I liked it. I found it interesting. I found it to be a lot more entertaining than the reviews made it out to be. It caught my attention, lured me in and forced me to finish its pages in less than 24 hours (even with work and sleep). Murder Genes affected me similarly but had a resoundingly more intellectually stimulating effect. All of the reviews I read of 50 Shades were awful. Miserable. I really expected something completely terrible, which unfortunately may be why I ended up giving it 4 stars - because it far exceeded my excessively low expectations.
The reviews can be found here: http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A20FFRV0GTW0WN/ref=cm_cr_pr_auth_rev?ie=UTF8&sort_by=MostRecentReview
Anyways, my goals for this post are as follows:
1] give you a glimpse into the stories that I would deem my "favorites"
2] ponder my reasoning behind writing reviews
3] post the two reviews I've written
4] explain how this is relevant to INCOMPATIBLE's sequel
5] urge you to write your own reviews =]
....The novels that I find most intriguing are usually in the young adult science fiction genre. This includes, but is most certainly not limited to:
-The Hunger Games
-Uglies
-Matched
-Divergent
-Ender's Game
-Harry Potter
-The Giver
-Murder Genes
-okay, I could go on and on... but these are the first that come to mind essentially, and definitely the most recent reads...
Interestingly enough these books all have A LOT in common: overly controlling government, unique and strong central character (usually first person perspective but not always), violence violence violence, super unique back stories and settings that get me all confuzzled and excited, hormone-raging moments, mind-stretching psychological depth, super awesome characters that you fall in love with AND crazy ass plot twists and secrets that make you go "WHAAAT?!" more times than I can count on two hands.
So ya, ^ that's the gist of what I enjoy in a novel... I'd like to think that Incompatible might be able to inspire some of these same themes (of course quite a few clearly did not appear in the tale - violence for instance), and if I were to be honest with myself Incompatible is a tame novel to say the least. But this I find OK. This is what I am comfortable writing right now, what I'd be comfortable having my younger sister read... not too much violence and no sex.
And ultimately this is what I've found so intriguing about my review-writing-endeavors. The two novels I've written reviews for are: Murder Genes and 50 Shades of Grey. Sex is the predominant theme in 50 Shades, with a twinge of violence here or there, but not so much that I'd say "Yes, this is definitely a violent novel!". Murder Genes IS violent, a novel I would label "violent" in the tags at the bottom of amazon.com; sex is not a constant occurrence but it happened often enough for me to deem said story inappropriate for teenage audiences, especially combined with the violent nature of the sex.
Why did I write reviews for these novels, then? They were underrated. The readers who wrote reviews for these tales had such obvious bias that I felt compelled to give a more accurate depiction of my thoughts on the story, without giving away the plot like MOST reviewers do (annoying!). I'd like to go into more detail because the circumstances under which I wrote the Murder Genes review are significantly different than the circumstances that occurred which led me to writing the 50 Shades review this evening.
--warning... before proceeding, keep in mind I do not recommend either of these tales for the faint-hearted, no one under the age of 18 should read these AT ALL, they are not something I would personally vouch for as appropriate for my younger sister (who is in high school, mind you) and honestly have no correlation to INCOMPATIBLE - as mentioned above my novel is very tame (which can be both good and bad, depending on your perspective)--
Murder Genes I loved. It deserved every star out of the 5 that I gave it! I researched the author because I found his ideas intriguing. I've always LOVED the nature vs nurture debate and found the perspective given in the novel to be very thought provoking rather than cut-and-dry "this is how it is and what I think". It seemed the author similarly had qualms of his own about how much nature and nurture play a role in an individual's actions and lifestyle. This being said, I contacted the author on his blog and agreed with a very positive review that he decided to share with his audience. He urged me to write my own, so I did.
On the other hand...
50 Shades of Grey I didn't love... I liked it. I found it interesting. I found it to be a lot more entertaining than the reviews made it out to be. It caught my attention, lured me in and forced me to finish its pages in less than 24 hours (even with work and sleep). Murder Genes affected me similarly but had a resoundingly more intellectually stimulating effect. All of the reviews I read of 50 Shades were awful. Miserable. I really expected something completely terrible, which unfortunately may be why I ended up giving it 4 stars - because it far exceeded my excessively low expectations.
The reviews can be found here: http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A20FFRV0GTW0WN/ref=cm_cr_pr_auth_rev?ie=UTF8&sort_by=MostRecentReview
Now what i find so incredibly interesting about all of this is that the novels I wrote reviews for do not fall within what I deem my "genre of interest", neither do they fall within my own personal writing genre (unless I'm very much mistaken - please do inform me if you disagree), because as I've stated Incompatible is subdued, especially in comparison to these two novels.
How this is relevant to readers: Well, let's just say INEFFABLE will not be nearly as tame as INCOMPATIBLE. That's not to say it will cross into a genre where you'd find Murder Genes or 50 Shades; I can guarantee that it will have more flare, spice, fear, death (omg!), adventure and secrets... why? Because apparently that's what I enjoy reading! ;]
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