Find You In The Dark by A. Meredith Walters
Publisher: Self-published
Release Date: October 10th 2012
Maggie Young had the market on normal. Normal friends, normal parents, normal grades...normal life.
Until him.
Clayton Reed was running from his past and an army of personal demons that threatened to take him down. He never thought he had a chance at happiness.
Until her.
Maggie thought their love could overcome anything. Clay thought she was all he needed to fix his messy life.
That together, they could face the world.
But the darkness is always waiting.
Sometimes the greatest obstacle to true love is within yourself.
It's not every day I read about deep and serious issues such as bi-polar disorder, cutting and suicide. I had no idea Find You In The Dark dealt with these issues, and honestly, had I known, I probably would've stayed far away from the book. I guess it's just something I'm not comfortable reading about, and so my experience with this particular book wasn't exactly "good".
The story itself is one that we've read a million times before - girl meets boy. Girl and boy fall in love. But no matter how many times I read these storylines, I can never get bored. Find You In The Dark however, steps up a level. It's Girl meets a boy who suffers from bi-polar disorder and Borderline Personality Disorder. You can probably guess the sort of twisted and very unhealthy relationship the two main characters, Maggie and Clay have...to say "unhealthy" is probably an understatement. Their relationship is mutually destructive, and while I appreciate Maggie's love for Clay and her insistence on staying with him at all times, sometimes, in order to help, one should...let go.
Detrimental relationships aside, I also had problems with the dialogue and the tone of the characters. They're supposed to be teenagers, 17/18-year old, yet the main character, Maggie sounded like a middle-aged woman impersonating an over-dramatic 13 year old. The excessive use of question and exclamation marks really didn't help either. Maggie's sarcasm was, the majority of the time, over-the-top and her 'snarky' comebacks were just plain annoying. It didn't help that she cared more about her unstable boyfriend, who, might I add, was constantly humiliating her and getting angry at her for the smallest things, than her friends, family and everyone else important to her.
Clay, as mentioned above suffers from bi-polar disorder and Borderline Personality Disorder. As mindful as I am of his condition, I couldn't tolerate his mood swings, spontaneous anger towards everyone and psychotic breakdowns. One minute he would be smiling, laughing with everyone, the next, he would start cutting himself and trash a whole room. I felt like smacking him at times when even though he says he loves Maggie and would do anything to protect her, he doesn't exactly try to accomplish that. It would help if he was doing as the doctors advised and taking the prescribed medicine..but no, he wouldn't do that.
I guess this is a small problem, but as someone who is extremely stringent about grammar and formatting....the paragraphing really irked me. Conversations would be written in a huge paragraph and half the time I had to re-read the paragraph to confirm who was speaking. Yeah...it's an editing problem....but it really annoyed me. This book just wasn't my cup of tea. I know many people enjoyed it - check GR, it has an average rating of 4.2 and the majority of reviews show glowing praises. Unfortunately, this book was too heavy and dark for my liking; I just couldn't enjoy it.
A massive thank you to A. Meredith Walters and The Readiacs for providing a copy of Find you in the Dark for review
This book doesn't sound like my kind of read either. So I'm sorry to hear you didn't enjoy this one. Still, a nice and honest review as always! :)
ReplyDeleteHmmmm. I'm thinking this book is not for me. I typically stay away from issue books because they're really hard for me to read and I get all emotionally messed up, and then add that in with an excessive use of exclamation points and over the top snark and I think I'll have a myriad of frustrations with the story. I appreciate your honesty Shirley!
ReplyDeleteHmmm, I just saw this in goodreads the other day and was instantly curious since so many reviews are positive. But after seeing your review and hearing a different side I think I might just skip this one up. The main characters sounds like people I would have a hard time appreciating and they both sound quite frustrating. Thank for the honest review, though, Shirley!
ReplyDeleteEunice @ Book Overdose
Oh gosh I don't think I would have known that this book dealt with so many issues either if you hadn't mentioned it either, I think I would have picked up this book by reading the blurb alone, but now after reading some of the issues you had not so much. Thank you for the insightful review Shirley! :)
ReplyDeleteThose editing issues would have frustrated me too. I can overlook small mistakes, but not if it prevents the flow of the writing. And like you, I am not always comfortable with reading about such weighty topics. Sorry this didn't quite turn out to be what you wanted, but thaks for the helpful review, Shirley! :)
ReplyDeleteIt's difficult to enjoy a story that doesn't flow nicely, and having to stop and try to figure out who is saying what would make it difficult. Sounds like something that could be fixed with some more editing. I don't mind reading issue books as long as there is character growth and it's not too frustrating, but this sounds like the pushes the limits. Sorry this didn't work out for you Shirley. Thanks for the honest and informative review. :)
ReplyDelete