Eccentric Circles

Eccentric Circles by Rebecca Lickiss

An amazon summary, "The doctors said Piper Dickerson's grandmother died of old age. The elf said it was murder.

A charming debut from a writer who already shows great promise. (Charles de Lint)
A delight. Rebecca Lickiss is a strong new voice. (Kristine Kathryn Rusch)" AMAZON LINK OF MINIMAL DETAILS

I strongly suspect that the amazon summary is so short, because it didn't want to say too much about the book to reveal it's craptastic nature. I finished it because I wanted some sort of awesome redemption to come into play for the spastic main character who was so atrociously boring that I shudder to think that people live like she does. I don't even know.

It's all SPOILER LAND all the way. No reservations, no nothing. I'm upset at the book, I'm upset that I spent time finishing the book, and I'm upset that I have a headache from the book, and the book was so aggravating that I couldn't even angry sleep at it. WHAT IS UP WITH THAT.

Okay, okay, I'm mad. Everyone gets it. Book.

Piper Pied's great grandmother died from old age and we first meet her attending the funeral, where she's the only one dressed in black. The rest of her 'eccentric' family is dressed in colorful ways and have fun remembering the great grandmother. Piper is the first to throw a handful of dirt into the grave and then everyone else proceeds to throw in little mementos instead of dirt. Skip forward to the 'wake' of sorts where they meet at a restaurant that's used to the family and already has alcoholic beverages and certain foods waiting for them. The will is read and in it it states that whoever threw the first handful of dirt on her grave inherits the house and everything that goes with it. I'm going to sum it up as 'aggravating legal matters'.

We never see her 'eccentric' family actually do anything eccentric. Piper has a few moments where she's like MAN I WISH I WAS NORMAL but then doesn't do anything that isn't normal besides moping all the time.

So then Piper gets to the house and is like la da da and cleans it. She wakes up the next morning to discover a man sitting in her kitchen and he's SUPER STUDLY (seriously, every time we see him on page we have to hear about what he looks like in acute detail because it's aggravatingly important for some reason or other). She's like WHOA MAYBE I AM DREAMING but in her Grandmother's will she was like LOL NEIGHBORS ARE WEIRD BUT THEY'LL GROW ON YOU so she assumes it's a weird neighbor.

Until he says he's an elf from Fairy and that her grandmother was murdered.

Um. What.

So that happens and the story progresses with Piper being all HAHHAHAHAHAA YOU'RE NOT AN ELF even though he takes her to the land of Fairy (conveniently accessible out her grandmother's backdoor as long as it's opened when you're thinking of Fairy), she's met other folks from Fairy and she's still like MAN I'M DELUSIONAL.

Then the elf interacts with other humans in the human world and she's still like HE'S NOT REAL, I'M DELUSIONAL WHEEEE.

.....yeah.

So she kind of investigates her grandmother's murder (to play along with the elf or something) and everyone from Fairy insists she finishes the story blah blah blah.

None of it really makes sense. Everyone from Fairy is a suspect at one point or another, Piper is supposed to be brilliant at stories but she can't figure her way out of a cardboard box (and she has a college degree, and she's allegedly a nomad until recently but can't rely on herself for anything) and this book is everything that I hope I never write pretty much.

In the end it turns out the weird wizard from Fairy had a huge crush on the grandma and the grandma was like LOL NO and he's like IF I CAN'T HAVE YOU I'M GOING TO CRUSH BOTH OF OUR WORLDS, THAT'LL TEACH YOU and the Grandma is like What? Uhhh....and gets murdered by the wizard anyways (maybe, that was never really answered) and the main thing that matters is that Piper winds up with the elf.

The action scenes were terrible throughout the book, like they're be a fight in the kitchen after she just made a sandwich, and the sandwich would fall on the floor and instead of worrying about the fight she was like, "SIGH, I'M GOING TO HAVE TO CLEAN THAT UP BECAUSE NO ONE ELSE WILL". No comedy elements to it. She was just lamenting while fending off the bad guy that she had to clean up a sandwich.

Also, the style of writing didn't agree with me at all. Piper's voice was so all over the place and she cared about the wrong things at the wrong times. There were a lot of story elements that didn't give the story a complete picture but rather took away from the story.

It was terrible.

I'm going to go take some Tylenol. What the heck.

...

Happy reading!