Lora Hates Spam

by R.J. Barker

This one starts out a little 'bitty', with quotes and false starts before the prologue, which itself is separated in time from the story that begins in chapter one.

To be honest, it was a slog. I wanted to DNF it every time I picked it up. It seemed to have trouble deciding what genre it is and the overlay of Dickens' Great Expectations (one of my favourite stories of all time) didn't really work. It felt very contrived and I would have given up when Miss/Mrs Oliver gave Jack her speech in the graveyard except that I always finish books I've requested from Netgalley, even when they're painful.

The sentence structure was fine, the problems were in dialogue and plot. The sort of scifi sequences with some mysterious entity observing could have been left out altogether and improved the story as well as shaving off some over long filler.

The characters themselves, while not evoking sympathy, were at least defined personalities but Jack himself was pretty wet and the naming of many of them again I felt insulted Dickens. Still, the book seems to have a lot of good reviews so maybe it just has its audience.