Wayward Son (Simon Snow, #2)
by Rainbow Rowell
One star not because I detested it but because it's fairly bad and falls short of two stars. [b:Carry On|32768522|Carry On (Simon Snow, #1)|Rainbow Rowell|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1481729252l/32768522.SX50.jpg|43346673] read like a really good fanfic---thoughtful about the source material, plot-oriented, original. Wayward Son is a mediocre coffeeshop AU of Carry On. Even if I liked coffeeshop AUs, I wasn't that invested in any of the characters.
A timeline of listening to the audio book:
5%: Uh oh, I really hope this develops a plot soon.
14%: Just finished the scene where Baz tries to teach Simon to drive. Seriously considering ditching.
The only person whose growth I'm at all interested in is Agatha, and it sounds like she just keeps making the same old mistakes? Sigh. The next time she gets a chapter is at 22%.
~60%: OK, I figured I'd "flip through" the audiobook and hear Agatha's chapters (which are too few and too far between); I started listening again at ~45% because there was a new character, and then the plot showed up, and now I think I might finish it? I don't feel like I missed anything important, lol.
100%: Nope, I finished it, still bad.
The only thing that I missed by skipping everything except Agatha between 14% and 45% was however they met The Muggle, and what a Quiet Zone is. The callbacks to something funny about skunks and carhenge were just as good OK without actually reading them, which was something Carry On got very right.
Agatha doesn't get the character development I hoped for, and we don't even find out if her dog is possessed or not. I don't like Agatha as a person, but she interests me more than the other characters. She's got all this uncertainty, disillusionment, and teenage white feminist schtick bubbling under her skin, and that's before we even get to her maybe being queer.
But no, she doesn't get to stretch her wings and figure out what she's actually interested in, she just gets kidnapped again and gets to fight back briefly this time and that's supposed to be cathartic. (It's not.)
Nobody in this book grapples with the effects their issues have on other people, they just marinate in them. Ugh.