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A review by dtaylorbooks
The Line by Teri Hall
3.0
THE LINE is almost all pure set-up for something more to come. It made for a rather dull read. The concept is intriguing but the execution left me wanting more.
The story takes place almost entirely on this property that contained a mansion of some kind, a guest house, and a greenhouse. There are orchids in the greenhouse that Rachel helps take care of, so required by Ms Moore, the crotchety property owner who’s obviously hiding something. It’s told in third person limited and alternates POVs between Rachel, her mother, and once or twice, Ms Moore but it’s told in this storyteller sort of way that really detached me from everything that was going on. I had a hard time pinpointing Rachel’s age because she came off so incredibly young and naive. She comes off as maybe 11 or 12 but I think she may be closer to 18 based on her mother’s conversations about college. There was just such a distance there that nothing really stuck with me.
There was a good chunk of ‘as you know, Bob” infodumping going on in regard to how the US ended up in its current situation in the guise of a pop quiz sort of situation. What really irked me about the world, though, was the terminology. It was just so . . . lazy. There was a corder, as in REcorder. Instead of the United States it’s the Unified States. There were multiple instances of this and I just couldn’t help rolling my eyes at each one. It’s different without effort and that really bothers me. As someone who puts a lot of stock in world-building, even when you’re deconstructing today’s society, put some freakin’ effort into it.
Not a whole lot really happens in this first book of the series. It’s just setting up what’s to come in subsequent books and it feels like all this information I got in THE LINE could have been dispersed in other books. Plus there wasn’t a lot of room for Rachel to grow as a character. She’s so tightly controlled by her mother and Ms Moore that she doesn’t have the opportunity to grow until the very end when she’s left to fend for herself. And by this time I’m already lost to the book.
This is a quiet book that I really haven’t heard anything about. I can’t even remember reading much about it when it came out so I don’t know if it gets better or not. But THE LINE was lackluster and kind of a let-down as far as the blurb goes. The moment in the blurb about finding the message? Happens about 85% of the way into the book. So . . . yeah. All set-up, no action, very little real story.
2.5
The story takes place almost entirely on this property that contained a mansion of some kind, a guest house, and a greenhouse. There are orchids in the greenhouse that Rachel helps take care of, so required by Ms Moore, the crotchety property owner who’s obviously hiding something. It’s told in third person limited and alternates POVs between Rachel, her mother, and once or twice, Ms Moore but it’s told in this storyteller sort of way that really detached me from everything that was going on. I had a hard time pinpointing Rachel’s age because she came off so incredibly young and naive. She comes off as maybe 11 or 12 but I think she may be closer to 18 based on her mother’s conversations about college. There was just such a distance there that nothing really stuck with me.
There was a good chunk of ‘as you know, Bob” infodumping going on in regard to how the US ended up in its current situation in the guise of a pop quiz sort of situation. What really irked me about the world, though, was the terminology. It was just so . . . lazy. There was a corder, as in REcorder. Instead of the United States it’s the Unified States. There were multiple instances of this and I just couldn’t help rolling my eyes at each one. It’s different without effort and that really bothers me. As someone who puts a lot of stock in world-building, even when you’re deconstructing today’s society, put some freakin’ effort into it.
Not a whole lot really happens in this first book of the series. It’s just setting up what’s to come in subsequent books and it feels like all this information I got in THE LINE could have been dispersed in other books. Plus there wasn’t a lot of room for Rachel to grow as a character. She’s so tightly controlled by her mother and Ms Moore that she doesn’t have the opportunity to grow until the very end when she’s left to fend for herself. And by this time I’m already lost to the book.
This is a quiet book that I really haven’t heard anything about. I can’t even remember reading much about it when it came out so I don’t know if it gets better or not. But THE LINE was lackluster and kind of a let-down as far as the blurb goes. The moment in the blurb about finding the message? Happens about 85% of the way into the book. So . . . yeah. All set-up, no action, very little real story.
2.5