Joint Review: The Vanishing Game by Kate Kae Myers

Title: The Vanishing Game

Author: Kate Kae Myers

Genre: Contemporary, Thriller, Young Adult

Publisher: Bloomsbury
Publication date: February 14 2012
Hardcover: 353 pages

Seventeen-year-old Jocelyn follows clues apparently from her dead twin, Jack, in and around Seale House, the terrifying foster home where they once lived. With help from childhood friend Noah she begins to uncover the truth about Jack’s death and the company that employed him and Noah.

Jocelyn’s twin brother Jack was the only family she had growing up in a world of foster homes-and now he’s dead, and she has nothing. Then she gets a cryptic letter from “Jason December” – the code name her brother used to use when they were children at Seale House, a terrifying foster home that they believed had dark powers. Only one other person knows about Jason December: Noah, Jocelyn’s childhood crush and their only real friend among the troubled children at Seale House.

But when Jocelyn returns to Seale House and the city where she last saw Noah, she gets more than she bargained for. Turns out the house’s powers weren’t just a figment of a childish imagination. And someone is following Jocelyn. Is Jack still alive? And if he is, what kind of trouble is he in? The answer is revealed in a shocking twist that turns this story on its head and will send readers straight back to page 1 to read the book in a whole new light..

Stand alone or series: Stand alone

How did we get this book: We both got ARCs via Netgalley. Half way through it, Ana decided to buy a final copy of the book.

Why did we read this book: The blurb sounded so promising! We were both REALLY excited to read this one.

Review:

**THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS. We feel that the book is so ridiculously bad, we need to despoil it in order to save our readers. Just a friendly Public Service Announcement.**

Ana’s Take:

I am not going to sugar coat it: this is the worst book I’ve read in a long, long time. If I sound angry, it is because I am: I spent my well-earned money on this, I spent my precious hours reading it and all of it just feels really wasteful to me. I am not naive enough to expect that all books will be incredible but it appears I do still foster the hope that a book will at least be readable. I found The Vanishing Game SO badly written, I barely registered the plot or the characters. This does make me angry – where was the editor of this book? How can a serious publishing house SELL this stuff? I refuse to count as a positive the fact that the book has no spelling mistakes. Standards: I can has them.

The prose is barely serviceable: it is all tell, not show, and the telling is extremely clumsy:

“My twin, Jackson Harte, and I were the only children of our mother, Melody.”

“His unwillingness to accept my theories caused my sense of purpose to falter”

“I grabbed the blow-dryer, working on my hair. It was long and shinny.”

“I reached for the knob and felt my adrenalin take a hike, since what lay below was scarier to me than the fire starters in the other room.”

“Had Corner Boy’s hostile ghost somehow managed to transport me, or had I fallen into a strange fit and traveled up here like a sleepwalker? Panic surged through me, and I turned around.”

It relies on extremely cheesy metaphors and wordings that seriously, made me LOL many times reading this book:

“My mouth fell sober”

“Light-hearted, I began falling down the deep well of love”

“And in the meantime, why set me up to fall in love with Noah all over again, only to have him stab me in the heart like I was a vampire and he was Van Helsing?”

“For a few seconds my confidence that my brother was still alive wavered like a candle frame in a cold draft. But then I mentally sheltered that hope, unwilling to let Noah’s faithless logic extinguish it.”

“Since then, everywhere I went the pain of losing him went with me. It wore me like a backpack, slapping a rhythm of heartache against my soul with each step.”

It has many passages that are completely illogical if you think of it:

“The shooting from last night went through my mind again, more terrifying than my nightmare, and once more I wondered who the dark man at the end of the alley was. How had he happened to be there just as Georgie’s knife was ready to rip into me, and why had he killed him? There seemed to be no answer.”

There IS an answer. She just doesn’t know it.

“Any theories?”
“Maybe one, but it’s really out there.”
I leaned forward, intrigued. “Tell me.”
“A couple of times I wondered if someone in the house had abilities”
“What kind?”
“Maybe some sort of mental powers”
“I just don’t see how that makes sense,” I said. “From everything I saw, it seemed to me that the problem was Seale House itself. It was like the more controlling and mean Hazel got, and the more dangerous Corner acted, the more the house became that way too.”

Yes, because THAT makes more sense?

“I braced my body against the blast that would bring more pain and disfigurement than I could imagine.”

If she can’t imagine it, and it hasn’t happened yet, HOW CAN SHE KNOW WHAT WOULD IT BRING?

And so on so forth.

Beyond the writing though, I also had problems with the story, the content, the characters, everything. The blurb promises a “shocking twist” in the end. Not so much. I not only saw it coming from miles ahead, I also think this “twist” is as full of holes as a Swiss cheese.

There is also a significant amount of hate on girls here that made me super uncomfortable: any girl who was not the main character was “vain”, “nasty”, “silly”, “boring”. Also, you will be pleased to learn that the only reason why Jocey was not abused by her mother’s boyfriends growing up is because she was not beautiful. No, seriously. This is an actual thing in the book:

“Now, at almost eighteen, I admitted there’d been a plus to my unattractive looks back then. Considering all the men that drifted in and out of Melody’s life, if I’d been pretty like my mother I’d likely have gone through much worse stuff than I had. But because all they saw was a tall, scrawny kid that could’ve passed for a boy, they left me alone.”

And also this (when referring to a BITE MARK in her arm):

“Probably just a form of stigmata. Fear and guilt will sometimes cause a person to self-mutilate.”

Stigmata: I do not think it means what you think it means.

Listen, the book is so bad that not even the appearance of a NINJA (no, seriously) and of Surprise!Telekinetic powers saved it from being deleted from my Kindle as soon as I collected those quotes above.

Thea’s Take:

I really, really hate it when Ana and I pick up a book and are super excited to read it, only to find that it…well…sucks. I’m sorry, and I wish I could be diplomatic with The Vanishing Game, but it is appallingly bad. It’s so bad, I wondered if the first draft was posted on NetGalley in lieu of second pass or whatever stage in the publication process from which the publisher decides to create ARCs. Ana actually *bought* the final book just to make sure we weren’t reading some half-baked early version, embarrassingly and erroneously released.

Unfortunately, Ana found that the final product being sold was, shockingly, the same as the ARC. This, dear readers, is no bueno. I have made note of a few of my favorite passages from the book (excepting the ones that Ana has already detailed), because I believe the showing is so much better than the telling.

Please, observe:

Strange shadows streaked his numb face like tears on a mannequin.

At the back of the pizza place I scooted into the corner of a dimly lit booth. Couples and a few families were scattered throughout the place, eating or talking. I envied their associations and their pizza.

This is my new favorite catchphrase. I love a 17 year old girl that thinks to herself – I envy your associations…and your PIZZA.

Furthermore, Ana’s note about the attitude towards female characters is actually nausea-inducing. Take for example this passage:

“Get out of the way, beanpole,” Monique said. “You’re blocking the view.”

Nessa laughed. “Yeah. Be considerate of us normal-sized people.” Two others, Tabby and Geena, joined in with jeering comments. I turned to look down at the four petite girls with their long hair and shimmering eye shadow. “Oh, I’m sorry. I thought you were still in the restroom stuffing your bras with toilet paper.” A few of the boys laughed, including Jack and Noah. Nessa’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t even wear a bra, do you, freak?”

“Nope.”

“I don’t think you ever will. In fact, I think you’re just a boy who dresses like a girl.”

“At least I’m not a girl who dresses like a prostitute.”

I don’t think I have the words to express my utter horror, disgust, and RAGE at this kind of mentality being spewed in this book. Granted, the main character is actually insane (SPOILER ALERT – but kind of obvious) and has her own slew of personal perception issues, but I can’t help but feel that this pervasive attitude towards girls that like to wear makeup and dress in attractive clothes is indicative of a much larger problem. This derision towards other females, THIS makes me see red. Not only is it dismissive, but it also perpetuates the stereotype that girls who like to wear makeup or go out or wear short skirts are akin to prostitutes.

The computer hacker aspect of the plot is utterly ridiculous. It is so ridiculous that I need to reiterate in caps: UTTERLY. RIDICULOUS. You know that scene in Jurassic Park when Lex has to reboot the system to lock the doors and she goes, “IT’S A UNIX SYSTEM! I KNOW THIS!” Yeah. The Vanishing Game is kind of like that (sans the awesome dinosaurs, of course).

There’s an honest to god NINJA that appears in the late chapters of the book, which is also amazingly crazy ridiculous. The “twist” is indeed made of swiss cheese, as Ana says. I recently watched the lamentable horror film The Ward, which feels almost exactly like this book – full of flawed story logic and with an utterly predictable plot twist that was cool back in the 1990s (you know, when Fight Club came out).

There are many other quotes and many other problems, but I can’t muster the strength or power of will to detail them. Suffice to say, The Vanishing Game is a very, very bad book.

Rating:

Ana: 1 – Utterly bad. I want my money (and a few hours of my life) back

Thea: 1 – Ditto

Reading next: The Humming Room by Ellen Potter

Buy the Book:

Ebook available for kindle US, kindle UK, google, nook and kobo