Review: Blind Spot by Laura Ellen

Blind Spot
Laura Ellen
Series: None
Release Date: October 23rd, 2012
Publisher: Harcourt Children's Books
Number of Pages: 336 
Source: NetGalley
Rating: 1 of 5 stars

There’s none so blind as they that won’t see.

Seventeen-year-old Tricia Farni’s body floated to the surface of Alaska’s Birch River six months after the night she disappeared. The night Roz Hart had a fight with her. The night Roz can’t remember. Roz, who struggles with macular degeneration, is used to assembling fragments to make sense of the world around her. But this time it’s her memory that needs piecing together—to clear her name . . . to find a murderer.

This unflinchingly emotional novel is written in the powerful first-person voice of a legally blind teen who just wants to be like everyone else.

I've been tricked! Bamboozled! Played! *goes to look up other synonyms for tricked* Cheated! Conned! Deceived! Duped! Flimflammed (that's my favorite)! Swindled!

But most of all, I've been disappointed. Disappointed that I went into Blind Spot thinking it'd be, well... good, disappointed in what it actually ended up being, and also, disappointed that it wasn't what it could have been. And what this could have been is so, so much more than it was.

Your enjoyment in this novel boils down to one major thing (but that's not to say there aren't other reasons why you'd be disappointed in Blind Spot), and that one major thing is what you're expecting Blind Spot to be. Now, if you're going into Blind Spot expecting it to be a thrilling, edge-of-your-seat murder mystery, as both the synopsis and trailer made it look like it'd be, then run away from this book like it's a madman coming at you with a butcher knife. If you see this in the book store (when it's released), just drop everything you're holding, let out a high-pitched scream, and run away flailing your arms while screaming, "You won't trick me! You won't trick meeeeeeee!". Sure, it may just cause a scene, maybe even get you locked up in a nice little padded room, but at least you can say you've escaped the clutches of Blind Spot and its deceit. Me? Dramatic? No...


However, if you're going into this book expecting a painfully cliché and horribly written high school drama à la, "That bitch right there - she just looked at my boyfriend. Hold my phone, I'm coming at her with my nails and the power of my Twitter followers", with very, very little murder mystery aspects and characters you want to desperately strangle, then grab this book. I can't assure you'd like it, because there's still, of course, the issues pertaining to the writing, pacing, plotting, characterization (you know what, let's just go under the assumption that everything in this book is bad), but at least you won't go into this book expecting one thing and end up getting the exact opposite thing. Though let's be honest, who read the synopsis and thought, "Amazing! I can't wait to get lost in this riveting *snort* high school drama!" Mmhmm. Thought so.

Aside from me going into Blind Spot expecting one thing and getting the opposite in the worst way possible (which really is a personal letdown, and not entirely about the book's quality. Though it was the book's marketing that led me to believe this would be a thrilling murder mystery, so it's not entirely my fault that I believed the marketing, is it?), everything that could have gone wrong in this book did. Upon reading the first few pages of Blind Spot, I had that sinking feeling that said, "Well, this isn't going to go well." And that sinking feeling wasn't brought upon by the, in my opinion, extremely amateur writing, that is practically glaring at first, but by the main character, Roz. I don't know if Laura Ellen intended to make Blind Spot comprise of characters you're supposed to hate, but, considering that I did indeed hate each and every character in this book, I'm going to go under the assumption that making me hate everyone was her intention. The problem is, I don't enjoy reading novels where the characters are so intensely hatable that I want to personally reach through the pages and strangle them. I hate to generalize that all novels with intentionally hatable characters are unenjoyable to me, but, in my experience, I am led to believe that that is true. In my opinion, few authors are able to pull off writing novels where you're supposed to hate the characters, but where you're still thoroughly interesting in what's going to happen to them.

Though I was somewhat interested in what would happen to the characters, it wasn't in a "I can't wait to see what happens to this character!" way, but more like a "God, I hope this character gets stabbed on the next page" way. And, woe is me, I went through pages and pages of this novel, only to end up disappointed, once again, though not just by the novel's quality, but also that no one got stabbed out of nowhere. *sigh* Oh, well. It's a hard knock life.

However, I did have other motivations for getting through Blind Spot, those motivations being that, a) I want to have a fully scheduled blog this week and I was hoping this'd be my review for Friday (pathetic, I know), b) I wanted to see how long it would take for the plot to magically appear like a Pokemon (around 60%, in case you were wondering. Yeah, that means this book is sixty percent crappy high school drama, and forty percent murder mystery. I'll just let you decide on your own how wrong it is that a book pitched as a riveting murder mystery is only comprised of about forty percent murder mystery which is neither riveting or interesting), and c) I didn't want trolls coming at me with sharp objects screaming that I'm not one to judge a book because I didn't even finish it. Odds are that they still will come at me with sharp objects, but this way that argument is crossed off the Troll's Way To Troll list.

Ultimately, if my incoherent ranting and rating weren't enough of an indication, I found Blind Spot to be a horribly written, paced, plotted and misguided mess. I almost threw my Kindle at the wall because it frustrated me so much. Honestly, the people behind this book's marketing should just write a whole new synopsis for this that actually plays fair to the book's content. Hell, I'll even write the synopsis. I can't assure it'd be a fair or unbiased synopsis, but at least it will give readers a forewarning that what they think they will get in Blind Spot is not what they will end up getting. That warning may even save a thrown Kindle or two. Seriously, think of the Kindles.