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book_concierge's review
1.0
Illustrations by David Ostow
Audiobook narrated by Jessica Almasy
From the book jacket Winnie Flynn doesn’t believe in ghosts. (Though she wouldn’t mind a visit from her mom, explaining why she took her own life.) When her mysterious aunt Maggie, a high-profile TV producer, recruits Winnie to spend a summer working as a production assistant on her current reality hit, Fantastic Fearsome, she suddenly finds herself in the one place her mother would never go: New Jersey.
My reactions
I read this only because I needed to fulfill a challenge for a paranormal read, and this YA novel was readily available at the library. Not a genre I gravitate towards.
Basically it’s a “woo-woo” teen horror flick book. I rolled my eyes so often I made myself dizzy. Didn’t find anything scary about it. Dialogue was stilted. And basic premise was terrible. At least on audio I could double the speed and get through it more quickly.
The text version is a sort of combination of traditional text novel and graphic novel, being illustrated by David Ostow. Some of these drawings are very detailed and I found them interesting.
Jessica Almasy did a credible job of narrating the audio, but she had mediocre material to work with. Not her fault. 3*** for her narration.
Audiobook narrated by Jessica Almasy
From the book jacket Winnie Flynn doesn’t believe in ghosts. (Though she wouldn’t mind a visit from her mom, explaining why she took her own life.) When her mysterious aunt Maggie, a high-profile TV producer, recruits Winnie to spend a summer working as a production assistant on her current reality hit, Fantastic Fearsome, she suddenly finds herself in the one place her mother would never go: New Jersey.
My reactions
I read this only because I needed to fulfill a challenge for a paranormal read, and this YA novel was readily available at the library. Not a genre I gravitate towards.
Basically it’s a “woo-woo” teen horror flick book. I rolled my eyes so often I made myself dizzy. Didn’t find anything scary about it. Dialogue was stilted. And basic premise was terrible. At least on audio I could double the speed and get through it more quickly.
The text version is a sort of combination of traditional text novel and graphic novel, being illustrated by David Ostow. Some of these drawings are very detailed and I found them interesting.
Jessica Almasy did a credible job of narrating the audio, but she had mediocre material to work with. Not her fault. 3*** for her narration.
kpjt_books's review
2.0
The book was an interesting blend of graphic novel, script writing and narrative done as a sort of running diary, but the plot wasn't really strong enough to pull it all off well. The characters could have used a bit more polish to make them more intriguing as well. I suspect it would be more appealing to a teen audience especially bif they have affinity for horror and reality TV.
mel_tk's review
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
3.0
Not a huge fan of the ending and the whole thing could've used one last round of editing (I noticed a lot of really obvious discrepancies) but overall really fun read
luna_rondo's review
4.0
I was a little hesitant when I started (as I'm not a fan of scary anything), but wow - totslly blow my mind away. I could not put it down. My only complaint was that it needed to be longer. I felt like the authors threw in some stuff at the end in a rushed way.
marpesea's review
3.0
Entertaining paranormal story on the set of a reality TV show, but it was not scary.
missprint_'s review
3.0
Seventeen-year-old Winnie Flynn doesn't know why her mother killed herself. All she knows is that her dad said yes when Winnie's estranged aunt Maggie proposed that Winnie spend the summer with her. Now Winnie is working as a production assistant on Fantastic Fearsome, the reality TV show Maggie produces and hosts.
This season the show has fresh, young talent (including one Devil Hunter named Seth who is as earnest as he is cute) and big plans to track down the famous Jersey Devil.
As much as she loves horror movies, Winnie doesn't believe in ghosts--or the Devil. But as she gets to know the Hunters and learns more about the Devil's strange history, Winnie begins to wonder if there might be some fact to the fantastic here.
Soon, Winnie realizes her family may have a stronger connection to the Devil than she could have imagined. But even Winnie's firm skepticism and calm might not be enough to keep her safe in The Devil and Winnie Flynn (2015) by Micol Ostow with illustration by David Ostow.
The Devil and Winnie Flynn is the second collaboration from the Ostow siblings.
Written as a scrapbook-style letter for Winnie's friend Lucia, The Devil and Winnie Flynn is a mixed media adventure filled with illustrations, shooting scripts, and other ephemera beyond the traditional narrative including appropriately eerie depictions of choice Jersey locations.
Winnie's dry humor and skepticism throughout the narrative keeps this novel firmly grounded even as the story moves into decidedly "fantastic" territory complete with magical powers, mysterious guardians and other psychic phenomena.
A quick finish and unanswered questions about Winnie's mother will leave readers hoping that The Devil and Winnie Flynn is the start to a series. The Devil and Winnie Flynn is a fun and campy horror novel filled with real details about the Devil and evocative New Jersey locations sure to have high appeal for horror fans.
Possible Pairings: Enchanted Ivy by Sarah Beth Durst, Ghost Huntress by Marley Gibson, Bad Kitty by Michele Jaffe, The Name of the Star by Maureen Johnson, The Mystery of Hollow Places by Rebecca Podos, It Wasn't Always Like This by Joy Preble, Unspoken by Sarah Rees Brennan, I Woke Up Dead at the Mall by Judy Sheehan, Veronica Mars
*A more condensed version of this review appeared in the 2015 issue of School Library Journal from which it can be seen on various sites online*
This season the show has fresh, young talent (including one Devil Hunter named Seth who is as earnest as he is cute) and big plans to track down the famous Jersey Devil.
As much as she loves horror movies, Winnie doesn't believe in ghosts--or the Devil. But as she gets to know the Hunters and learns more about the Devil's strange history, Winnie begins to wonder if there might be some fact to the fantastic here.
Soon, Winnie realizes her family may have a stronger connection to the Devil than she could have imagined. But even Winnie's firm skepticism and calm might not be enough to keep her safe in The Devil and Winnie Flynn (2015) by Micol Ostow with illustration by David Ostow.
The Devil and Winnie Flynn is the second collaboration from the Ostow siblings.
Written as a scrapbook-style letter for Winnie's friend Lucia, The Devil and Winnie Flynn is a mixed media adventure filled with illustrations, shooting scripts, and other ephemera beyond the traditional narrative including appropriately eerie depictions of choice Jersey locations.
Winnie's dry humor and skepticism throughout the narrative keeps this novel firmly grounded even as the story moves into decidedly "fantastic" territory complete with magical powers, mysterious guardians and other psychic phenomena.
A quick finish and unanswered questions about Winnie's mother will leave readers hoping that The Devil and Winnie Flynn is the start to a series. The Devil and Winnie Flynn is a fun and campy horror novel filled with real details about the Devil and evocative New Jersey locations sure to have high appeal for horror fans.
Possible Pairings: Enchanted Ivy by Sarah Beth Durst, Ghost Huntress by Marley Gibson, Bad Kitty by Michele Jaffe, The Name of the Star by Maureen Johnson, The Mystery of Hollow Places by Rebecca Podos, It Wasn't Always Like This by Joy Preble, Unspoken by Sarah Rees Brennan, I Woke Up Dead at the Mall by Judy Sheehan, Veronica Mars
*A more condensed version of this review appeared in the 2015 issue of School Library Journal from which it can be seen on various sites online*
radruby's review
i just could not get into this book for the life of me, and it seemed very rushed and the characters had nothing interesting or that i could connect with, very flat
skillwithaquill's review
1.0
I tried starting this book about a month ago. I was really turned off by this passage at the beginning. "I stumble so my hip jostles the corner of a magazine rack...Tomorrow I'll have a weird-shaped bruise on my too-pale skin. I wonder, fleetingly, how any one person could possibly be so incapable of normal human interaction."
A book with a white, clumsy girl as the first-person protagonist?
*Miranda Priestly voice* Groundbreaking.
A book with a white, clumsy girl as the first-person protagonist?
*Miranda Priestly voice* Groundbreaking.
tjlcody's review
1.0
Oh Christ was this book annoying.
The story went all over the place, the characters were annoying as all hell, and we went from "looking for the Jersey Devil" to "MAGIC AND SUPERNATURAL SHIT EVERYWHERE". And for a book that promised to be "terrifying"? It was not.
Most annoying things:
Winnie's voice went back and forth for me, between "okay she's sassy and snarky" to "okay now she's actually being a contentious little jackass". Everyone else was relatively two-dimensional. There was very little character development- the only one that I can really pinpoint with any clarity is Winnie's transformation from skeptic to believer, and even then, it was just... Just not pulled off well, at all, given that it happened over the course of a book that couldn't quite keep track of where it was going.
The constant. Whining. About. Horror. Movie. Tropes. Holy. Freaking. Shit. Again and again and again. I don't know if the author thought she was being "original" by dissecting and lamp-shading horror-movie tropes and cliches EVERY FIVE PAGES, but it wasn't original, it was irritating and it actually got to a point where I was growling "Oh shut up" out loud whenever it happened.
I mean, seriously- how much time do you need to dedicate to ripping apart horror movies in your horror-book? How much time do you need to whine about it? And the worst part is, by association of this being a horror book, it sounds painfully like the author is trying to say "UGH this genre may have a few gems but it's SO OVERDONE- btw isn't my book awesome?" I doubt that's how she intended it to come across, but unfortunately, that's how it did.
Finally, this author hit on one of my most hated things: Misrepresenting history so that we can whine about how bad women have had it previously. And by that, I mean the "history is full of men trying to destroy powerful women" horseshit that Maggie and Winnie both spouted.
Look, I won't get into a full history lesson, because that will decimate the remaining 17,974 characters I have left for this review, and may actually require me to continue it in a Part 2.
All I'll say is that the "bluh bluh men have always tried to fuck around with powerful women" bs irritates me for three reasons:
First, I have yet to read/watch a single thing with this as a message that didn't come across as a blatant plea to the female sectors of your audience for pats on the back for how pro-women you are. And as a woman, that makes me want to vomit.
Second, going off the first, there is a way to convey that women were not treated well in previous decades without getting up on your soapbox and preaching. Other books have done it, and done it well- and they succeeded because they were subtle, factual, and simple about it. Anything to the effect of "The big bad menz have been conspiring to keep women down for all of history" makes it pretty damn clear you're preaching, and preaching from a place of someone with a very rote understanding of actual history and the role of women in it.
Which leads us to Three: it is possibly the most insultingly simplistic view of women's history that a person could have to suggest that it's always been the Big Bad Men who have tried to keep women down, or that they did it strictly because they were women and not, y'know, actual military or political threats. I'm getting really sick of hearing this bs argument regurgitated again and again ad nauseam in fiction.
And also, it's a little insulting from the perspective in this book when the "power" that the Big Bad Menz were trying to suppress were things like "the ability to persuade people to see things your way" and "the ability to make people forget things you don't want them to remember" (because lol neither of those could possibly be used for nefarious purposes, right?).
So yeah. Not a fan of this book. Not at all.
The story went all over the place, the characters were annoying as all hell, and we went from "looking for the Jersey Devil" to "MAGIC AND SUPERNATURAL SHIT EVERYWHERE". And for a book that promised to be "terrifying"? It was not.
Most annoying things:
Winnie's voice went back and forth for me, between "okay she's sassy and snarky" to "okay now she's actually being a contentious little jackass". Everyone else was relatively two-dimensional. There was very little character development- the only one that I can really pinpoint with any clarity is Winnie's transformation from skeptic to believer, and even then, it was just... Just not pulled off well, at all, given that it happened over the course of a book that couldn't quite keep track of where it was going.
The constant. Whining. About. Horror. Movie. Tropes. Holy. Freaking. Shit. Again and again and again. I don't know if the author thought she was being "original" by dissecting and lamp-shading horror-movie tropes and cliches EVERY FIVE PAGES, but it wasn't original, it was irritating and it actually got to a point where I was growling "Oh shut up" out loud whenever it happened.
I mean, seriously- how much time do you need to dedicate to ripping apart horror movies in your horror-book? How much time do you need to whine about it? And the worst part is, by association of this being a horror book, it sounds painfully like the author is trying to say "UGH this genre may have a few gems but it's SO OVERDONE- btw isn't my book awesome?" I doubt that's how she intended it to come across, but unfortunately, that's how it did.
Finally, this author hit on one of my most hated things: Misrepresenting history so that we can whine about how bad women have had it previously. And by that, I mean the "history is full of men trying to destroy powerful women" horseshit that Maggie and Winnie both spouted.
Look, I won't get into a full history lesson, because that will decimate the remaining 17,974 characters I have left for this review, and may actually require me to continue it in a Part 2.
All I'll say is that the "bluh bluh men have always tried to fuck around with powerful women" bs irritates me for three reasons:
First, I have yet to read/watch a single thing with this as a message that didn't come across as a blatant plea to the female sectors of your audience for pats on the back for how pro-women you are. And as a woman, that makes me want to vomit.
Second, going off the first, there is a way to convey that women were not treated well in previous decades without getting up on your soapbox and preaching. Other books have done it, and done it well- and they succeeded because they were subtle, factual, and simple about it. Anything to the effect of "The big bad menz have been conspiring to keep women down for all of history" makes it pretty damn clear you're preaching, and preaching from a place of someone with a very rote understanding of actual history and the role of women in it.
Which leads us to Three: it is possibly the most insultingly simplistic view of women's history that a person could have to suggest that it's always been the Big Bad Men who have tried to keep women down, or that they did it strictly because they were women and not, y'know, actual military or political threats. I'm getting really sick of hearing this bs argument regurgitated again and again ad nauseam in fiction.
And also, it's a little insulting from the perspective in this book when the "power" that the Big Bad Menz were trying to suppress were things like "the ability to persuade people to see things your way" and "the ability to make people forget things you don't want them to remember" (because lol neither of those could possibly be used for nefarious purposes, right?).
So yeah. Not a fan of this book. Not at all.