Book Review: <em>Sliding On the Edge</em> by C. Lee McKenzie

Title: Sliding On the Edge

Author: C. Lee McKenzie

Pages: 267

Recieved from: some contest or another...

Summary:

Something's wrong.

It’s not a heart-grabbing noise like when somebody jiggles the doorknob to see if it’s locked. It’s not a bitter smell like the electrical short we had last month, when all the breakers popped. No. It’s something in the air, something like a ghost making its way through the room. And it can’t be Monster, not after last night.

Shawna Stone is sixteen going on twenty-five. Already deeply scarred, she has learned to survive with a tough attitude and a thin blade. Her journey is destined to be short. Sliding on the Edge enters the world of a desperate teen and her disillusioned grandmother, each with secrets that stir mutual distrust. As these two unlikely companions struggle to co-exist we are reminded that the human spirit has the capacity to overcome even the deepest suffering.

After her mother skips out with her latest boy-toy, Shawna is given two choices; try to survive on the hundred dollars she's been left and get a job, or take the bus ticket the boy-toy left her and go to California, where her alleged Grandmother resides. She chooses the latter (though I'm sure the first option would have made for a much more fascinatin' story) and heartwarming dramedic family growth ensues. Call me cynical, but I tend to loathe all of those things. Especially if they're done as...poorly as they are in Sliding On the Edge.

I know this is supposed to be all about character development and all, but it simply does not supply. All I'm getting is an atypical joint narration with one surly teenager with an attitude problem but ALSO happens to be a genius!! and a tough as nails old gramma who, even though she's only known this little brat for, like, a week, wants nothing more then to see her little granddaughter grow into the pretty wittle butterfly that she is. And it is such a crock of shit I would have bit it if I wasn't on a train and there was an old lady next to me who was already looking pretty irked with the world.

Look, I'm not going to pretend I didn't enjoy reading it. Maybe it's out of some emo desire to torture myself, or maybe I just love nonfat corn, but I didn't realize how much it sucked until I put it down and thought. And thought.

You guys, I really tried to see something awesome about it, like I do in my everyday life. Everything has something awesome in it, every person has the potential to be awesome, you know? That's my philosophy. That's what I strive to instill upon my unconceived fetuses. I tried, chicos. Truly, I did. But Sliding On the Edge is like a bad elective; you wait it out, but it ends up sucking so hard you just want to switch out to Home Ec or something but it's too damn late because the fifteen day grace period is over and if you were to switch now you'd lose credits and have to take summer school--

Sorry. School-time flashbacks.

Anyway. Shawna is bratty and annoying and this fish adjusts way too well out-of-water, and her gramma takes a liking to her way too easily and can I just say how much I loathe the thought of a scruffy kid who happens to be a secret genius even though they've been to school like five times? Because it's annoying. Why can't a troubled skulker just be a skulker?

I'd tell you more, but every other character is so forgettable I can't even remember their names.

Harsh? Perhaps. But it don't say "Opinionated" for nothin', fools.

Rating: 2 out of 10