The Way He Lived by Emily Wing Smith

Gut Instinct Rating - 2

Characters - 2

Believability for type and topics - 2

Similarity to other books - 5

Writing Style - 2.5

Excitement Factor - 0

Story Line - 1.5

Title Relevance - 2

Cover art - 3

Goodreads users gave this book a 3.44. I think it was more deserving of a 2.56.

Emoji Meter: 😴 😒 😑

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Published in 2008

Pages: 222

Publishing Company: Flux/Llewellyn Publications

Number of books by author: 3 Novels

Genre: YA Fiction

This book was horrible. I have no idea what the purpose of me reading it was

other than it received really good reviews from Penguin Teen, which isn't actually the company who even published it. I'm surprised I actually finished this book; I mean, honestly, it was so underwhelming and so incredibly boring. Thank God this was a $0.99 buy - it also makes sense that it was $0.99 and brand spankin' new. The characters were supposed to be written intertwined, which was done well, but honestly... the book was supposed to be written from 6 perspectives... but we only got two voices... Joel's, the dead kid, and the other 6 people who were supposed to be different. You couldn't differentiate between the voices -- other than knowing they were written in different chapters, titled by their names, you wouldn't have any idea that you were reading stories from different people. It was really unbelievable. Death by dehydration on a boy scout trip? Don't think so. Not in this day and age. Cell phones and walkie-talkies are required for emergencies just like this one. And the boy scout troop never would've gone in the heat of summer when the heat index could've killed children. I couldn't really get passed that part. I mean, points for uniqueness. No one else is killing closeted gay Mormon boy scouts who died not drinking the water meant for their secret lover who didn't know they were their lover.... sounds stupid, huh? The writing was kind of a mess, probably because the characters were a mess. You couldn't track A from B and you didn't know when the story started or ended... it was just a collaboration of short stories basically with no point, except maybe the last one? There was no closure, there was no connectivity. It was just here's a story, here's a story, here's a story. Which made is all incredibly boring. I literally can't even award this book any points for excitement. I really wanted to put it down numerous times, but I figured it was only 222 pages and it had good reviews from Penguin... never ever again. There was this really great concept of a story, but the execution of the story line was horrible. There was none, really. The title and art were fine, but they didn't hurt or help the book.