Neon in Daylight by Hermione Hoby
This book got a bunch of pretty good high-profile reviews–and I can’t really understand why. There’s nothing really wrong with it, aside from minor complaints (characters who seem to exist when convenient, like Inez’s friend Dana (?)). She writes well. She builds some suspense. (Kate is friends with Inez, and also, unknowingly, dating Inez’s dad! Who’s going to figure it out, when, and how?) But it just isn’t really about anything. There’s no plot to speak of, and the characters are all kind of listless, without delivering any particular insights. Bizarre things happen, but they don’t ever seem to produce any illumination. I think a book could get away with all this if it displayed some self-awareness about it all, but I didn’t get that here. I guess it basically just seems like a decently executed book by someone who had nothing much to say.
Amy P. Knight 