Will Boast

I think if this book had a more substantial ending I may have given Daphne a higher rating. Personally, I hate meandering non-endings and this novel had a doozy of one. A tightly written ending could have salvaged some of the issues I had with this novel but it never got there. In the end, Daphne the book, and the character, was devoid of any significant character development or depth. I felt like Boast's writing style was too superficial to service the story he was trying to tell because it prevented any meaningful connection or investment in the characters. The lacklustre and sparse dialogue was also a big problem for me. It was difficult to buy into Daphne's relationships when we saw so little of how she actually interacted with them.

Ultimately, it felt like the author squandered a brilliant plot and the existing mythology.… (más)

Ridiculous, applaing, disgusting, distasteful. Awful prose, dialogue of illiterate juvenile level, characters that are less interesting than an unpainted wall. This filth has nothing to do with the Greek myth of Daphne and Apollo. This is a low-quality toilet paper.

P.S. Writers, please. Leave the Greek myths alone. They’re out of your miniscule caliber.

P.P.S Male writers, if you don’t know how to write an interesting heroine, focus on a cowboy or an alien. You’ll do better. Possibly...… (más)

Daphne is twenty-nine, living in the San Francisco’s Mission district in an up-scale apartment that she regularly redecorates and photographs, unsuccessfully, for the magazine Interiors. She is smart (computer science and project management), ambitious (working in a challenging position for a big pharma company), has at least one sexy, cool friend (Brook - from Daphne’s home town in Indiana), and a caring mother who keeps tabs on her from a distance. But she’s also got something else, a condition that causes her to lose control of her muscles (to the point of effective catatonia) whenever she experiences heightened emotions. Laughter, tears, the caress of a loved one — anything can set her off. For Daphne it’s a condition she’s been dealing with since puberty. She’s got it under control. Mostly.

Will Boast tells this story from Daphne’s perspective. In some ways it hearkens back to Ovid’s account of Daphne and Apollo (Daphne even takes up with a boyfriend name Ollie). But mostly it is more locally situated, both physically in San Francisco, and temporally, given the numerous references to world events that impinge on, especially, Ollie’s actions. It is punctuated by set-pieces that Boast elaborates at length. These are interspersed with numerous short chapters getting us from one set-piece to the next. It’s a curiously deliberate style. And it might account in part for why Daphne never fully comes to life, is never fully believable (at least from the first-person perspective). Daphne has a job which involves her in the distasteful end of medical research, which isn’t fully integrated into her story other than to provide her with a sufficiently high-paying position to warrant her lifestyle. And Ollie is even less believable, or at least less coherent. Characters here have a tendency to inexplicably make left-turns in order to drive the story forward.

It’s a passable read if you don’t mind heavy handed allusions to trees (for Daphne). But for me it seems to not entirely work.… (más)

I received an ARC from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

DAPHNE tries to say a lot, but seems to trip over itself as it shuffles towards its conclusion. Living is hard, and is especially so for anyone who literally "cannot even" with their emotions. (Admittedly a bit tongue-in-cheek here, but Cataplexy is actually pretty scary.)

In a way, nothing really happens. At the same time, it's about the two steps forward, one step back dance we all do to just figure out how to get by in a world that has no time for us to figure our stuff out. This means we either take risks or shut ourselves off from people. (Spoiler: As expected, neither option works out very well for the characters in DAPHNE.)

Boast offers a few moments of clarity and potential in this story, though not enough to make the lackluster journey worth it.… (más)