Technically, You Started It by Lana Wood Johnson. Unabridged e-audiobook. ~5 hours. Narrated by Katie Koster and Christian Barillas. Scholastic Audio, June, 2019. (Review of e-audiobook borrowed from public library. Finished copy courtesy of publisher.)
When I opened the hard cover of this epistolary novel, my heart sank a bit to find that it is told entirely in text messages. I don't love texting irl and my digital-immigrant eyes have trouble following long strings of text. Still, the premise intrigued. Luckily, I found it while browsing new e-audio additions in Libby. It was delivered to my phone after a brief hold. I found it quite entertaining.
High school senior, Haley receives a text from a classmate in her AP history class regarding an upcoming assignment. He identifies himself as Martin Nathaniel Munroe II. The only problem is that there are two Martin Nathaniel Munroe IIs in her class and she hates one of them. Believing she is talking to the one she doesn't hate, Haley answers his question. He responds and the two begin to banter. Soon the bantering turns into full-fledged honest conversations as the two open up. Is it time to meet irl?
This was kind of fun. It was like eavesdropping. The challenge of the text format is that the only clues we have to these characters are what they
Another challenge when texting or reading texts is the absence of emotional clues. Sure, we have emoticons, of which I am not fluent; but it can become tricky. The performance of these two new-to-me narrators helped with that. Haley was snarky and anxious and often hilarious. Martin was earnest. But then, perhaps the audio turned the book into a series of phone conversations?
Either way, Technically, You Started It was an amusing experiment. I'm eager to book talk it when we return to school. I think my teens will love it. Not sure I'd jump into another text-only novel very soon, but interested in reading more from this debut author.
No comments:
Post a Comment