Left Behind for a Reason: Abandon

So, I don't know if it's only me who's noticed, but I feel like Greek and Roman mythology was the original soap opera/reality TV. Kim and Chloe couldn't hold a candle to the messed up stuff that goes on in some of those stories. I mean, Saturn devoured his son--devoured as in ate him up. Like a happy meal or something. Have you ever seen that Francisco de Goya painting? Yeah. Not pretty.

Anyway, when my life is full of drama--which it all too frequently is--sometimes I like to turn to a nice dramatic book--you know, just to remind myself that no matter how hard life gets, at least I'm not the main character in a Stephen King novel. So, when I saw that Meg Cabot, one of my favorite authors from my preteen and teen years, had written a book, Abandon, based on the Persephone myth and it was only like $3, I purchased it on my nook faster than you can say "Hercules, Hera, and Zeus!" Well, probably a good deal faster than that actually--that's quite a mouthful.

So, whatever, I bought it, I was excited, I settled into reading it, and after holding out, through all 219 pages, I really have to say this is probably the most disappointed I've ever been in a book. Ever. And I tried to give it a chance, I really did, but there was just so much of it that fell below my expectations that I really can't encourage anyone to read it.

Does that mean it was the worst book ever? No. It's only slightly below average actually. I may have actually doomed it even before I started reading it simply because I built it up so much in my mind. I mean, c'mon, the Persephone myth? It gives a writer so much to work with! Hell, pick any story out of Greek mythology and you've basically been handed the blueprints to a crazy messed up story--all you have to do is work on the details and the character development, because mythical individuals do tend to be kind of one-dimensional. But I personally think there's so much you could do with that. Unfortunately, Cabot doesn't even begin to tap into the creative madness that could have been accomplished.

For starters, the pacing of the book is confusing, especially in the beginning. The reader is forced to jump back and forth between the present day, and two separate past events of the main character, Pierce: the "accident" and the "incident." I think Cabot was trying to create a sense of mystery by not revealing too much about Pierce and her accident at the beginning of the book, but all she accomplished, for me anyway, was a sort of baffled, "What the heck, just tell me what happened or stop bringing it up."

On top of that, the timing/time setting in general left a little something to be desired. Cabot made the decision to set the book in present day, and though it certainly saved her some research and added some relatability for present day teen readers, I think she may have made the wrong choice. I don't know if it's simply been so long since I read Cabot that I forgot, but I thought she used to be good at teen dialogue and lifestyle depiction. I was a huge fan of both her Mediator and 1-800-Where-R-U series' when I read them in high school. And I don't know if I just remembered her writing wrong, or maybe she lost her touch, but this book just seemed cheesy. The colloquial tone of the narrator/main character, Pierce, just wasn't striking the right cord with me. It felt like she was going on and on in this conversational way, when I just wanted her to shut up and get back to the actual story.

Plus, I don't remember being that stupid and oblivious as a teenager. If I were Pierce it wouldn't have taken so long to figure out I was dead, or for me to understand that John liked me. And I would have understood immediately why my cousin and friend, Alex, was offended when I went to sit with the cool kids instead of him. Like, does Cabot really think teen girls are that dumb?--maybe some of them are, but not most of the ones who immediately recognize a Persephone myth when they see one. I was kind of insulted by Pierce's inability to figure things out.

Plus, Pierce's slow piecing things together, means the story is slow. It really shouldn't have taken so long for the events of this book to play out. I don't know if Cabot was purposely dragging it out so she could get more than one book out of it, but it would have maybe been beneficial for the story to just consolidate. And she does a heck of a lot of what I was told not to do while pursuing my bachelors degree in writing: telling instead of showing. That actually goes back to the time jump thing--instead of just starting from the beginning, we keep having Pierce tell us bits and pieces of what happened to her before she finally has a flashback and shows us. I could have done without all the repeats.

 To top it off main characters are just so blah. The only interesting characters, actually, are Pierce's Uncle Chris, his son/her cousin Alex, and Pierce's new-found friend, Kayla. Yet they barely feature in the book. Meanwhile the characters who take center stage, Pierce and John, are the same as pretty much every other boring teen romance novel main characters ever. Yeah, so John is the lord of the underworld and has some anger problems and an obsession with a mortal girl, Pierce, who died and came back to life. Sounds interesting, right? Wrong. Somehow Cabot failed to make even that interesting. John is simply the tortured, knight in shining armor--almost Edward Cullen-esque, but perhaps with even less of a personality. For cripe's sake he's the Hades character in this book! he could have been so much more. Especially if Cabot had just admitted that his "love" for Pierce is really more like obsession--as soon as he see's her he wants her to stay with him forever. It would have been a very interesting relationship to hash out, had Cabot not played it off as so normal and romantic and instead exploited it for what it was--a young man's desperate attempt to stave off maddening loneliness.

And don't even get me started on Pierce--not only does she not play a convincing Persephone, in my opinion, but in general she's just not a very interesting character. She's an inconsistently portrayed stereotypical teenage girl, who's both afraid of every bump in the night, and also completely unafraid of the fury (demon-like creature escaped from the underworld) that she encounters at the end of the book.

And you would think that an encounter like that, meant to be the climax of the book, I'm guessing, would be interesting too, right? Wrong again! It takes up about two pages and is perhaps one of the most boring scenes in the book. And there are far too few interesting scenes like this even attempted. Cabot has all of mythology to work with and she barely even touches on her main subject, the Persephone/Hades myth.

So over all, I have to say this book had a lot of potential. Greek and Roman mythology would actually be a great next direction for Young Adult literature to head in. As far as I know it hasn't been extensively done for that age group and there are so many myths to work with and explore. I myself, after reading this book, had the great urge to simply rewrite it--I had so many ideas of how the story could go--so many hopes, and they were all dashed. And I really did try to give it a chance. I read it through and I'm honestly considering reading the following books just to see if Cabot redeems herself. Because yes, like I said before, this book is not awful--you will not perish at the sight of it's terribleness like some unfortunate soul struck dead by Medusa's gaze. However, it is a book better left abandoned in the box.