Wake

Wake by Lisa McMann

Publisher:Simon Pulse

Pub. Date: March 4, 2008

Pages:224

Age Level: 15-16+/YA (For sexual content, language, underage drug and alcohol content, and mildly disturbing images.)

Synopsis

Not all dreams are sweet.

For seventeen-year-old Janie, getting sucked into other people's dreams is getting old. Especially the falling dreams, the naked-but-nobody-notices dreams, and the sex-crazed dreams. Janie's seen enough fantasy booty to last her a lifetime.

She can't tell anybody about what she does -- they'd never believe her, or worse, they'd think she's a freak. So Janie lives on the fringe, cursed with an ability she doesn't want and can't control.

Then she falls into a gruesome nightmare, one that chills her to the bone. For the first time, Janie is more than a witness to someone else's twisted psyche. She is a participant....

Review

I was really excited to read this book when I got it from the library. It sounded like it would be really good and I had heard a lot of positive things about it. Well, needless to say, I was a little disappointed.

I felt that Wake wasn't very well written and didn't live up to its potential. A lot of the sentences were choppy and, at times, fragments. McMann would often start sentences with past tense verbs, completely leaving out a subject. I found this disrupted the flow of the story. I also thought it very strange that McMann chose to write this novel in journal format , yet told the story using third-person narrative. It made Wake very hard to get into at first. I think it is kind of funny that it was on the chapter, 'And Picks Up Speed' that things started getting a little more interesting.

As for the story itself, I felt that Wake had a very good and unique plot, though some of the dreams were a little too cliche. Despite the lack of good writing technique, Wake was a fast paced and enjoyable read.

The characters could have been a little better developed and they were a little hard to connect with due to the writing.

The ending left me interested in what comes next and was satisfactory to my tastes.

I must say I was a little annoyed at how casual underage drinking is made to appear in this book. On more then one occasion, Janie and Carrie make themselves mixed drinks and get drunk with little to no consequences. Even though Cabel doesn't drink, you never once hear him say anything reproachful to Janie when she does. McMann could have also cut back on the language a bit.

Overall, I liked it well enough. This wasn't one of the best books I've read but it wasn't one of the worst either. The story itself was very good but I felt could have been amazing had it been written differently. I might would reread it and will probably read Fade. (I here it is supposed to be better.) I would probably recommend Wake to most teens and young adults because I am very aware that my opinion isn't the popular one and that many, many people loved this book. So don't let my review discourage you because you may still really enjoy it.

Grade

Characters: C+

Writing: C-

Plot: B

Ending: B

Cover: B

Recommendable: B-

Series: B-

Overall: C+