Member Reviews
Elaine W, Reviewer
Book – Two Hearts
Author – David Connor, E.F. Mulder
Star rating - ★★★☆☆ (2.5 rounded up)
No. of Pages – 178
Cover – Really nice!
POV – 3rd person, one character POV
Would I read it again – No
Genre – LGBT, Romance, Science Fiction, Retelling
** COPY RECEIVED THROUGH NETGALLEY **
Warnings: bullying, homophobia, violence, death, resurrection, mortuary-related events.
For me, this story had some great potential, but it just didn't live up to it. I gave it 2.5, because of how the story was presented in my copy, but rounded it up to 3 because of the potential and the general plot being quite original.
The story is a retelling of the Frankenstein tale, but with a new, original twist on it. Instead of it happening as a planned medical experiment, it's done deliberately by one party, but innocently and unwillingly, almost, by the MC Frank. After being struck by lightning, he gains the ability to affect electrical and kinetic energy, but it also means that it's dangerous for him to touch anything or anyone, with a poor fly going self-combustable when he first discovers his “gift”. It's that gift that allows Frank to help his mentor and father figure, Vaughn.
While I liked how the original tale had been adapted and that Frank was unaware of the underlying machinations until late on into the second half of the story, there were a lot of issues with it.
For one, the editing needed some serious work. There were misplaced commas, full stops, quotation marks and random letters left behind that imply a word used to be there, all littered throughout the story in such consistency that I have to believe this ARC copy had never been seen by anyone even slightly proficient in editing, which is disappointing. I always expect some level of editing issues in an ARC, but the state of this story left a lot to be desired.
It could also have benefitted from a few beta readers, who might have been able to point out that the entire first half of the story needed some work. Mostly, I didn't like that it was all telling us about Frank and his life, without ever showing us anything important until late on in the story. There were also a lot of info dumps in the first half the really didn't need to be there. Most importantly, there were times when we were “told” how Frank became burned, how he was disliked and disfigured, how he became hit by lightning and even shown that last event for ourselves, only for Frank to later tell Liam all about the events in just as much detail, often using identical terms. Sometimes things were told in a different way when Frank explained them to Liam than how we'd seen it happen in Frank's memory, creating a consistency issue. Such as, at 70%, when Vaughn says that the 1970's is five years away, yet he tells Frank at 26% to act “like a man in his twenty-fourth year in this decade – the nineteen seventies.” Which also begs the question of Frank's age, which I'll get into in a minute.
I was surprised that this was a historical story, set in the 60-70's, because it was never once mentioned in the blurb and I didn't find out until I started reading. I'm always that comfortable reading historical, depending on how well I know the era, especially when it takes place in America, because I'm British and a lot of the historical data is lost on me, so that I never know if it's accurate or not. I had no chance to decide if I wanted to venture into a historical read with this one, because of the lack of warning, but it ended up being that the only historical thing about it was the historical information on the first page, the technology available and the speech. There was nothing that really pinpointed the timeline within the actual story, so it could easily have taken place in the 90's or in present day.
However, the timeline itself was confusing. We're taken back and forth through so much of Frank's life and memories that it's hard to tell how old he is during the present day. It's only at 48% that we find out that Frank, and Liam by default, is actually 30 years old, which was ambiguously guessed at by me, beforehand, but never made clear within the story. Which often struggled to grasp its own timeline, because the writing drifted from old fashioned to modern speech and syntax, both in dialogue for all characters and in the main text, rather than limiting it only to Frank's faniciful acting.
When it comes to characters, I have to admit that I found both Frank and Liam grossly childish. Neither of them had an ounce of maturity in their bodies, nor did Melissa or Renny. They were all a bunch of sixteen year old kids trapped in adult bodies, which became a little tiresome after a while. I understood why Liam acted that way and, at times, why Frank employed it to get him out of his shell, but it grew old quickly and became a bit excessive and stupid, at points. I also really didn't see the need for or logic in the tree sex. And that's all I'm going to say about that.
Overall, with disjointed storytelling, more telling than showing and the story not often making sense in the first half, it was hard to get into the story from the get to. It really picked up after Vaughn asks Frank to help him bring Liam to life, but by then it was quite tedious to get through. After that point, however, the rest of the story flowed better, it showed more than told and it explored more aspects of the story that I wanted to read. I think if the first half had been seriously cut out or limited to just a prologue or a few flashbacks, then it would have worked a whole lot better. As it was, there was only one flashback nearly at the 80% mark, while the rest of the 'memories' and 'flashbacks' occurred in the same font/text/style as the rest of the story, and without italics, to offer some warning.
To be honest, there were so many twists and turns that, had it been better plotted as to when to reveal them, it would have been a much more intriguing story. As it is, things like slipping in that Frank had stopped Renny's heart at Halloween – well before the last time we saw Frank actually talking to him – at the 13% mark and then not actually explaining what happened or what it meant until nearly 80% can sum up a lot of what was wrong with the timeline. We were told too much, too soon or not at the right time, either creating confusion or ruining the surprise of the big reveal later on.
Maybe if the story was halved in length, with a bit more cleaning up of the confusing plot, it could have been a 4 or even 5 star read. The potential was there, but it would need some work, with Frank and Liam acting less like moody teenagers and more like the adults they're meant to be.
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Favourite Quote
“There were a great many reasons to pick on Frank, and Renny Watson, once a bright spot in the darkness that was Frank's everyday life, had taken advantage of every single one.”
“Two people in love, living in the same home, were forced to sleep apart. For every way life was better, it was also worse.”
