2:32 AM is the debut novel by young adult author Emily Ford. The story is about a teenager named Cat, who has been picked to carry of the legacy of a 700 year-old Djinn (genie). As she finds herself thrust into the world of genies, she has to deal with both her normal life & the ramifications of what her very long future holds.
I was very excited to be asked to review this book, since the general storyline is different from much of what is available for young adults today. My sister-in-law is in middle school and you wouldn’t believe how hard it is to find books for her that doesn’t have rampant sex, violence & language in them. It is even harder to find something that isn’t a Twilightknockoff. As I have mentioned in past book reviews, I am by no means a professional author. Aside from product reviews, some poetry & a newspaper article, I have never been published. I greatly admire anyone who is able to get an entire novel written out. It can be a very long and difficult process. Trust me, I know…which is why I’ve tended to stay on the editing side of things over recent years. That being said, after finishing reading through the book, I have been agonizing over this review for weeks, which has caused to me to put off writing it until I could figure out how to write it without sounding mean.
Before I get into the full review, I first want to note that I was sent a paperback copy of the book. When I went online to Amazon to read the description (which was not printed on or in the book), I noticed that it is only available as an e-book. So, this review is solely based on the version I received and not what may be currently available.
Now, the plot and storyline for the story is great and has a lot of potential to be an enjoyable story. However, it is riddled with so many grammatical, wording and formatting errors that it is hard to read. There is an overabundance of commas throughout the book, most of which are either in the wrong place, aren’t needed at all or used incorrectly. The majority of them were being used to denote words being stressed in dialogue, when the word should either be underlined or italicized (most authors that I’ve read use this method). I also noticed a lot of ellipsis (which were even more prevalent than the commas), a lot of missed or misplaced quotations, & dialogue running into paragraphs when it should have been separate. A lot of the grammatical errors led to many sentences not making any sense whatsoever. There were also several instances where there were scene breaks that were left out.
The flow of the story was also a bit of a problem as well. There are parts that move along so fast that you lose track of how much time is passing story-wise. Other parts just seem to drag on forever and end up seeming pointless. Another issue was that many of the abilities of genies come off as too unbelievable, even for a fantasy. I found myself shaking my head at a lot of it.
The characters are all superficial at best, even Cat. There is no character development at all and none of the characters are even remotely likable. Cat came off as very shallow and drops Todd for Rolf in a split second. To add insult to injury, she then strings Todd (who genuinely has feeling for her) along, just in case the relationship with Rolf doesn’t work out. I also found the amount of foul language used to be very disconcerting as well, being that the book was billed as being free of it.
Another issue is the price of the book. For a fist time author who is self-publishing, it should be a reasonable price of no more than $1.99. The e-book is priced at $5.99, which is way too high considering all of the issues with it.
Overall, this book was a big disappointment. The general idea about the story has a lot of potential but is completely lost within the first few pages. As I mentioned earlier, this was a print edition, so I’m not 100% sure that it’s the same as the e-book. However, after reading this, between the language & overall horrid characters I definitely won’t be letting my sister-in-law read this even if there is a difference. My personal advice to the author is that she either needs to get an editor, or fire the one she already has. No self-respecting editor would have let this be published as it is now. Also, the e-book price needs to be lowered & the cover could also do some work. Again, I’m not trying to be mean. I’m just giving my honest opinion. If you are interested in checking out the book for yourself, you can find it on Amazon.
I received the above mentioned book for free.
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