What did you do this weekend? It was raining Saturday so, after getting some chores done, I got a head-start on the week’s posts. While I was working on one of the books I discussed – Never Saw Me Coming – I discovered that the author had another book out. So, with nothing else on the agenda for the day, I arranged myself on the chaise of doom* with a big mug of tea, a comfortable blanket, a toasted muffin, downloaded a copy, and started reading. Hm.

Do you know that book about the kids who see something horrible and split up and don’t come together again? But then, one of them dies and they all come back to the small town where they grew up?

Or the story about the teenagers who wouldn’t usually hang out together but do and become best friends, only then they do something that adults wouldn’t approve of, and swear they will never speak of it again? Only later, they start getting killed off one by one?

Or the one where a local religious figure has unusual sway over his flock, who grows more powerful and more profitable, while those who oppose him meet with mysterious deaths? And the small-town sheriff sees it all but can’t do a dang thing about it?

These themes are universal for a reason. Kids do – or at least did, when I was a kid – disappear for a day and face things they probably shouldn’t have to, like The Goonies or Stand by Me or even Harriet the Spy. Afterwards, as they grow up, they drift apart, hang out with different groups, go their separate ways. Sometimes they do come back to the small town where they grew up. This may not be a theme that resonated in other centuries, when people tended to stay where put. Or in other places, this need to wander seeming to be an American thing.

Teenagers from different backgrounds do sometimes hang out, a la Breakfast Club, and unexpectedly become friends for a short period of time. (Even I dated a football player once.) Sometimes a band of teenagers does something that parents wouldn’t approve of, a la I Know What You Did Last Summer – or The Crucible – and swear they will never speak of it again. But justice pursues them…

Sometimes creepy religious authority figures do mysteriously accumulate political power, wielding it to the benefit of their flock. And the local authorities do know there is something untoward going on and can’t find the evidence to make it stick. Sometimes these religious authority figures do use their power to take unfair advantage of the teenage girls in their flock, holding up purity as the goal, while seeking to use those girls’ bodies for their own purposes.

Perhaps this is why these themes keep cropping up. These themes resonate with us because they are part of the American experience of growing up: we move from object permanence to the awareness that our parents aren’t perfect, to noticing things that we hadn’t noticed before about our community. And, as teenagers, we start to reject those things, to lash out at them, at the stupidity of our parents for becoming inured to it. We start to stand up to the authority of a monsignor who records his interrogation of us without our permission and then threatens to play the recording to our parents, and what do we think our parents would say when they hear that recording? Huh?**

This book makes use of those themes. The author also introduces a theme of her own: what if The Ultimate Evil had sway over a town, with minions to do their every bidding, minions who served and protected it jealously, who were determined to maintain their relationship with The Evil entity, no matter what, and keep it there with them? Might The Ultimate Evil not get a little… bored?

To me, this was the most interesting, the most novel, idea in this book. The characters were pretty stock: the pretty, popular girl, devoted to her church; the popular football player at risk of failing math (and thereby missing the big game); unpopular Asian brains who, in their invisibility, notice things that others don’t, while struggling to fit in among their adopted country; the impoverished loner, artist, drug-dealer who lives in a trailer with abusive adults who don’t really want him; the sweet girl next door who gives and gives and always ends up with the short end of the stick. You’ve met them before.

The plot, ditto.

But this idea of The Ultimate Evil getting bored… The author had something there that I hope she explores in more detail later. It made a good plot device in this book, a good weakness.

But it wasn’t enough to redeem this book.

It’s not a bad book. It’s not badly written; the characters are likable enough; the plot has just enough wrinkles to keep you reading. If you found yourself in the Pasco, WA airport gift shop without anything to read and had to decide between this and the latest James Patterson, it would not be a mistake to read this. You won’t hurt yourself or regret killing time with it in a really boring airport.

There’s another universal theme out there: the sophomore novel. The second record album, art show, or writing effort that disappoints following a prodigy’s first, amazing result. I imagine it’s hard to live up to that. I read somewhere – I believe in reference to Alanis Morrissette or maybe Tracey Chapman, who I am so happy is having a moment now – that the first effort is a work of passion, curated over time. But, in the second effort, you are on the clock, you have to produce something, not through talent and passion, not over time, but under deadline using craft and discipline – and this can be daunting: your passion is spent and it’s hard to figure out what to write about next. (Unless you have the unlucky talent of spinning lost loves into gold, like Taylor Swift.) If you are lucky enough to get a third chance – and I hope this author does – the pain and disappointment of your sophomore experience, and the practice you now have of sitting down and writing as a job, can be provide a spur to greatness, that makes your next novel great.

Or at least, that’s my assumption. Not being a bestselling author, I can’t speak with authority on this topic. I can only speak with the voice of someone who reads a lot.

And who was disappointed from this book, not because it was badly written – as I said, I’ll take it over Patterson any time – but because the first book set high expectations that this book couldn’t live up to.

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^{*So-named because it lures in unsuspecting dinner guests who recline with the last words, “Oh this is quite comfort- yawn- zzzzzzzzzzzzz…”}

^{**I didn’t have the heart to tell him that my parents – who never once, that I remember, asked how school was going and, in fact, didn’t notice that I was a year behind in math until embarrassed by that information by a relative who wanted to use it further their agenda – wouldn’t care less. And, in fact, when I proudly shared the story of my defiance at dinner that night, they kind of shrugged, and went back to pushing their food around their plates in silence.}