The Space Between By Brenna Yovanoff Review

My rating: 1 of 5 stars


Hey guys, I haven't written a review in a while, so I'm going to do one now, and will be doing many more in the future. I have finally woken up from my hibernation.

This book was a product of the YA market. It had the regular YA feel with the pretty girl in dress cover, the average undeveloped romance, and the bland heroine and hero. It also had vampires, er, demons.
I originally promised myself that I wouldn't read this, knowing it'd be a mythology fail. I was right on target when I thought that many months ago. It was hard to get through, involving me rolling my eyes through what must have been the entire book.
So, let's start first with my feelings on the characters. Nothing seemed really significant about the characters. Daphne and Truman both bored me to tears, their romance fake. The other demons weren't very interesting beyond Beelzeebub and Obie, but they rarely had their time to shine. No, we had to hear about Daphne and Truman.
I don't buy that Daphne couldn't be destroyed; it had special snowflake written all over it.
What the hell did Daphne see in Truman? Sure they were more or less partners in crime, but in love? No.
I hated being in Truman's head. He was very dull, the chapters centered in his mind seeming unneeded, nothing more than extra pages. I never felt anything for him, not for his mother dying, his relationship to his Dad, and not even when he was getting wasted and trying to commit suicide. I just read through his parts, not even hoping it'd get better.
Daphne's sisters were obviously meant to be sluts. Daphne not wanting to be sluts like them, going from guy to guy to guy to guy, was obvious slut-shaming, and it was not OK. Daphne was also a special snowflake. (Wait, so were Daphne and Truman in love because they were both specshool widdle snowflakz?)

Now, let's get onto the mythology. I may get something wrong, and please do point out so, because I only know the Protestant Bible of no particular denomination. There may only be parts specific to Catholicism in this book (and some I was able to understand, others I may not have), so I'll mostly be saying stuff that leans toward Protestantism.
The Hell made of metal? No, the Catholics don't even have that. The Catholics go back 200 years, back when metal cities would have been stories you told children at best.
The demons having fun in Hell? No, Hell is for suffering.
The human stuff in Hell? The Bible states you can take nothing with you when you die, so I'm sure this wouldn't work if a human can bring nothing to Hell.
Basically, why aren't all the demons in Hell suffering? Most of this had nothing to do with mythology and what the Bible says, instead stemming from the authors imagination. The Garden scene I am sure was entirely the author's imagination.
Hell, the author even made Lucifer seem like a good guy. I just can't understand this book. Time and time again I thought of giving up and putting the book down.

The book was somewhat good in the last seventy to fifty pages, though it isn't enough to earn this book another star. It may have to do with my lack of knowledge in Catholicism, or maybe my wish for there to be gore, but it honestly didn't keep me reading. The book just barely picked itself up off the ground, but it so little off the ground you could say the book was still lying in the dirt.

The metal part wasn't even very original, as it reminded me of a book in The Spiderwick Chronicles where some sort of creature (though I can't remember what) wanted to turn the world to metal. The creatures didn't need to breathe. They even froze the girl character in a coffin to look pretty. So it too had pretty girl on cover.

This book was lacking in many, many things. This is my first review in a while, so it may not be as well written as others. I'm usually good at writing reviews for bad books, but this. . . Well, I'm reading Everneath next, and let's hope it's worth at least the three stars I gave it before.