Review: The Boy Who Sneaks in my Bedroom Window by Kirsty Moseley

Date Read: December 30 2012 - January 3 2013

Release Date: April 30th 2012

Publisher: Self-published

Source: Bought

Genre: Contemporary

My rating: 

Synopsis:
"Amber Walker and her older brother, Jake, have an abusive father. One night her brother's best friend, Liam, sees her crying and climbs through her bedroom window to comfort her. That one action sparks a love/hate relationship that spans over the next eight years.
Liam is now a confident, flirty player who has never had a girlfriend before. Amber is still emotionally scarred from the abuse she suffered at the hands of her father. Together they make an unlikely pair.

Their relationship has always been a rocky one, but what happens when Amber starts to view her brother's best friend a little differently? And how will her brother, who has always been a little overprotective, react when he finds out that the pair are growing closer? Find out in The Boy Who Sneaks In My Bedroom Window."

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This is the first time I've ever given a YA book I wanted to read, a bad rating. Especially one that was so raved about, looked so promising and had me really looking forward to reading it. To say I was extremely disappointed is an understatement.

The following is going be a very ranty, ragey review...

I was having issues with this as soon as I started and 6 pages in I wanted to stop reading. 12 pages in and I wanted to hurl something at my poor laptop where I was reading it from. But friends encouraged me to continue and see how it ended and I thought "well maybe this'll get better". By the last page I was like "UGH, meh". So I thought, "ok I'm going to take a shower and try to think about all the good things in this book and give it a better rating and review". I spent the whole time in the shower trying to come up with the good and just ended up cringing. 20 minutes later and the best I can give this book is 2 stars *extremely sad face*

Having read self-published books before I know there are indie authors out there who can write really good quality and engaging stuff. This just made me want to shy away from self-published books forever Q_Q

There is something called an editor. I'm sure even a self-published author can ask a friend - or friends (much needed in this case) - to read through and pick up simple things... LIKE SPELLING MISTAKES, GRAMMATICAL AND PUNCTUATION ERRORS FML. It was like Moseley had written something straight out, not bothered reading it through herself and decided it was ready for the general public. NO JUST NO. It's impossible NOT to pick up all those mistakes proof-reading the FIRST time. The second and the third time should have reduced them even more. Having a 3rd party read this should have reduced the amount of errors exponentially. If I'm writing an essay that exceeds 1.5k words, I always read through it multiple times and then send it to other friends who don't do that subject, and ask them to proof it for me for just the general stuff. I don't think that happened with The Boy Who Sneaks in My Bedroom Window. Even reading this half-asleep at 4am in the morning I could pick up so many errors.

Let's break this down into all the issues I had:
Issue #1: Tense. There was so much switching between past tense (which is how most things are written) and present tense. Example:
"I definitely preferred it when he looked at me with the angry eyes, than when he looks at me with the soft eyes. I don’t like that at all, it made me feel uncomfortable, it always made my hands shake."
First sentence is in past tense, half of the second is in present tense and then switches back to past... wtf. "I definitely preferred it when he looked at me with eyes than when he looked at me with the soft eyes. I didn't like that at all, it made me feel uncomfortable, it always made my hands shake." Would have definitely flowed better. This tense problem caused the whole book to be really staccato; explanations wouldn't flow through because the sentence didn't seem like it had been put together properly.

Issue #2: Voice. The voice of the MC Amber was just really horrible. She talks in the same style in chapter 1 when she's 8 years old, as the rest of the book when she's 16. The first chapter wasn't a memory either. It was happening in the present and then chapter 2 skips 8 years into the future. An 8 year old does not say "He was a cute kid, with blond hair and grey eyes with brown flecks in them." when describing their brother. I would expect more immature language that's innocent and naive. But at 16, one would also expect quite sophisticated language from the first person perspective, but no.

Issue #3: Perspective. The way this was written, it didn't feel like first person. I felt more like a third person at the way things were being recounted. I wasn't Amber, I was an outsider looking in. Which brings me to...

Issue #4: Telling rather than showing. This is the biggest no-no EVERRRRRRRRRR and my pet peeve of books. I got TOLD so many times how "adorable" Liam is. "He gave me his adorable puppy dog face" - I would have liked to know what his puppy dog face was. Did his blue eyes widen? Do the edges of his eyes crinkle, does he pout? WHAT DOES IT LOOK LIKE? There were these facial expressions used that I was told rather than shown and so I couldn't really feel the emotions associated with them. I was also told Amber herself was drunk. But things didn't look blurred, what people said didn't seem funnier, I (the reader as Amber) wasn't laughing more, things didn't seem different - I've read enough books to know what being drunk feels like. I know from personal experience the effects of drinking. I was not shown anything near what I usually feel. This relates to my next issue...

Issue #5: Word choice. Extremely, extremely poor word choice. If for some reason your vocabulary is lacking because you're blanking or something then you can highlight the word, right-click it, pass your mouse over the "Synonyms" option and find similar words in Word! OR you can ask a friend "what's another word for... or how can I phrase this better?" OR THERE IS SOMETHING CALLED A THESAURUS. Fml the amount of times I was told Liam or some other was "adorable" made me want to head desk.
"That speech was so freaking adorable!" p53 - No... that speech was more "heartfelt" or "sweet" (for lack of better words). The speech bares the person's heart and Amber reacts with "freaking adorable".
"He really was adorable." p114 - Other words include "understandable" or "patient" because that would have been more fitting for the situation at p114.
"He really was just too adorable..." p168
"I really did have the most adorable boyfriend in the world." p183
"Liam was still the most adorable..." p185
And that's not even half of it.

Then there was the sheer amount of "cooing" going on...
"he cooed," p5, p24... basically it was "I cooed", "he cooed", "she cooled", " cooed" SO MANY BLOODY TIMES I WAS GONNA RIP MY HAIR OUT. 14 matches in a book that only has 253 pages. What ever happened "she whispered sultrily" or "he said so smoothly it was like warm honey" OR SOMETHING OTHER THAN A SOUND A BABY MAKES?
*FLIPS TABLE*

Oh wait there's more...

Issue #6: Writing about abuse/sexual assault. This is a touchy subject and while writing about such situations is extremely hard to get right, writing about the emotions STEMMING from said situations shouldn't be too hard. So I'm sad to say that half the time I didn't feel the fear/angst/distress/cold/emptiness/hurt/powerlessness/self-blame/questioning/loss of confidence and whatever emotions that usually comes. I was TOLD of being afraid. But yeah half the time I didn't feel it. I SOMETIMES felt the powerlessness... but not really. There was no loss of confidence, barely any emptiness and need to hide. Half the time said character was happy she really was, their popularity and general "being 16" life, wasn't a facade for the cold fear inside. Apparently it's there, and I saw it come out sometimes but I don't know, I've read other books that deal with sexual assault and they were written exceedingly better. Don't get me wrong, I didn't expect her to think about it day in and day out because it happened long ago but it's meant to be haunting. Sure she has her nightmares and fear of hugging (even from girls wtf but who am I to say) but I didn't feel it. Basically... I HAD NO FEELS. ZILCH. NADA. ZIPPO. HOW EVEN?

Issue #7: No feels. Yeah I can't get over this. This book made me feel nothing. I didn't get scared, I didn't feel sorry for the MCs. I didn't cry, my heart didn't hurt. I didn't feel raw where situations were MEANT to leave me feeling heartbroken and empty. It was a whole big "MEH".

The only reason why I'm giving this 2 stars at all is because I thought Liam is the type of guy young girls should strive for - the sweet guy next door who is supportive and responsible. That's the only thing I liked - that he was responsible. And that's how guys should be.

Some people like this... I mean it's cute I guess but don't expect a literary masterpiece. I think this is something that a Year 12 HSC student would cook up in the Belonging creative section the night before when they run out of ideas - like me. I think even I used a broader choice of words in that 40min I had to write.

Excuse me while I go stick my head through a wall to try expel this book from my thoughts. Such a shame, this is only my 2nd read of 2013 :(