Giving up on Hero-Type

Hero-Type

by Barry Lyga

From the author's website:

Maybe it's courage, the kind Kevin Ross (Kross to his friends) showed when he saved Leah Muldoon's life.

Maybe it's living with your own guilt so someone else doesn't have to...

Maybe it's the way Kross was in the right place at the right time...

Or the way he wouldn't back down when everything that mattered to him was called into question.

Maybe it's keeping your friends close--like the Council of Fools, a motley collection of goofballs and whacked-out teenage jesters--even when they don't really understand you.

Or maybe it's striving to do the right thing...

Or figure out what the right thing is in the first place.

Maybe it's trying to figure out how to live with a father who barely speaks, a father who guards a dark secret from his past.

Maybe it's all of this.

Or none of this.

Kross saved someone's life. Maybe that's enough to make him a hero, regardless of his own terrible secret.

Then again...

Maybe not.

Review:

Okay, I am going to try my best to be fair with this book. Try is the key word in that sentence. You know how you come on my blog and sort of expect happy 5 rose rate reviews? Well, here you go, I am human - I'm giving this book 1/5 roses.

What drove me to turn this audiobook off half-way through it? (I am the type that usually plugs through a book at this point...)

I'm going to list them because it makes me feel better.

1. Main character is a hero because he is a stalker. And I really just would have been satisfied if he had admitted that very frankly. But no, he has to beat around the bush.

2. Point of View - I'm sorry, when you have a completely dull pimpled teenage boy who is a stalker and constantly talks down to himself in his head... I just can't handle that.

3. The only interesting parts were left out. Like, why was his dad discharged from the army? Just leaves you hanging and not in the way that keeps you reading to find out. No, the information just seems drop out. The main character finds out, but you don't.

4. The distraction plot. I felt like there was this weird separation between Kevin's obsession with videotaping Leah and his newer obsession with freedom of speech - started to impress Leah and then turning into a monster of its own.

5. The lack of positive female characters. Leah is an object, not a young woman in Kevin's mind. Flip's girlfriend is only around because Flip likes having sex with her. She has some better qualities but Kevin thinks of her as Flip's girlfriend, not as a person. Kevin's mom divorces Kevin's dad, loses weight, becomes a lesbian and forces Kevin to choose who he should live with - his dad or his mom and little brother. Kevin chooses his dad - and his mother and brother move states away to California. She doesn't call him unless he calls first.


Any redeeming qualities?
Not for me, but I can see guys getting into this book. As a girl it just didn't appeal and I often yelled at the CD player in the car for Kevin to admit his stalker-ness. To quote me "You're a stalker, repeat after me - STALKER". But no, there can be cursing, drugs and references to sex but he can't bloody call himself a stalker - he's just "a bad person". Lame.

I think it's also Lyga's style that I just can't get into. I could barely get through Fanboy and Gothgirl by him - and I could relate to some of the issues in that book.

So, sorry Barry, but I had to give up on this one or I might have damaged library materials pushing through the last 4 discs.

1/5 Roses