Book Review: Handbook for Mortals by Lani Sarem

I usually start my reviews by pasting the synopsis from Goodreads. I’m not going to do that this time because the reason I normally do it is to encourage people to read the book. I want to encourage you not to read this book.

I’m posting this outside my normal schedule so it doesn’t impact the reviews for GOOD books I should be posting. Enjoy.

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Short and Sweet: This is garbage. This is garbage. This is garbage.

First thing I want to get out of the way is the whole scam thing. To break it down, the author (or someone associated with her) ordered large quantities of the book (which didn’t technically exist yet) from sellers that report to the New York Times. The theory was that this was done in order for the movie, that is supposedly being filmed, to have the ‘Based off of a NYT Bestselling Book’ tag line.

This link will break it down for you a lot better.

Enjoy that read. It’s an interesting one for sure.

So, now, for the review.

Yes, I fully read this book from ‘cover’ to ‘cover’. I wanted to read it to see if it was really as bad as the previews were making it seem. Unfortunately, that also meant I had to buy it. As much as I regret giving that ‘author’ any of my money, I needed to see for myself.

Literally me while reading:

 

5%

 

 

 

20%

 

 

 

40%

 

 

 

 85%

 
This was absolutely atrocious. I don’t think I have ever read a book that was so straight out awful.

Let’s start with Lani Zade:

What’s with the obnoxious self-descriptions? The long, drawn out detail about her hair and body were completely unnecessary and stupid as hell. How many times does it have to be mentioned that she was hot, but not supermodel hot? And of course the repetitive she’s ‘special’ and ‘unique’. UGH. If I had to read that one more time, my Kindle was going to end up through my front window.

She was self-entitled, selfish, violent, rude and just a ridiculous character. Within the first 3% she was talking about punching her mother. What the hell is that?

Not to mention the whole “Oh I wish there was a photographer following me around so they could take my picture right now.” and “I wish my life was a movie so that this song I’m thinking of while being a complete douche bag could play right now.”

No. Just no.

Fictional character or not, whoever the hell is like this is an awful person. And, of course, every female character hates her for no reason and every male character hits on her/loves her for no reason.

The rest of the characters had absolutely no depth to them whatsoever. It probably didn’t help that instead of introducing you to a character and then you learning about them throughout the novel, she wrote ‘I would soon learn…’ and ‘I would come to learn…’. It was basically entire pages of ridiculous info dump that wasn’t necessary.

Half the time I only remembered their names because of the ridiculous amount of times it was written in one paragraph. I get it, writing multiple characters is really hard. I’m not denying that one bit. But repeating a characters line every second line is annoying as hell. Find a different way to refer to them.

Speaking of names: Cam, Mac, Clark Kent and Charles Spellman? I think someone needs to send the author a link to a baby names website.

The whole love triangle was horrible. One, there was absolutely no depth to either of the relationships and two, I have seriously read steamier kissing scenes with more chemistry in crappy Fanfiction. It was terrible. This author seems to think that the only chemistry or connection the characters need to have is having a bunch of things in common. Sorry to say, that’s not how it works.

Did I mention yet how horrendous the writing was? There is no way on this green earth that this book ever touched an editor’s desk. Hell, I don’t even think it was beta read.

A few examples:

There’s a part in the book where the main character is in a coma, and rather than swapping POV’s (which the author did many times, albeit badly) she decided to have Zade ‘pull’ memories from other characters. This book is so bad. So, so, so bad.

Alright, so before I rant on and on for days, I’m done. Don’t buy this, don’t read it and if it somehow happens to become a movie, don’t go see it. This chick doesn’t deserve any money at all for this garbage.

I have to end this review by thanking my wonderful husband for letting me rant and read him parts of the book to make sure I wasn’t going crazy. He agrees, it’s just that terribly written.  I also have to apologize to anyone reading this because this review is terribly written. I’m just completely shocked at how terrible the book actually is.

If there was a no star option on Goodreads, that’s the rating this book would get.