No One is Coming to Save Us by Stephanie Powell Watts

Amy 

fiction

I wasn’t going to read this novel (despite the fact that I had picked up a free Advance Reader Copy at the ALA Midwinter back in January) because its Goodreads rating was a low 3.08. (Yes, I’m a Goodreads rating snob and not ashamed to admit it because I tend to agree with their ratings!) But, No One is Coming to Save Us by Stephanie Powell Watts is the Atlanta Fulton Public Library’s kickoff selection for their new Virtual Book Club in collaboration with the American Library Association’s Book Club Central. So, I decided to play along since I already owned the book.

This was the story of people in a small Carolina town—mostly centering around the trials and tribulations of Sylvia Ross, her daughter Ava, and other family/friends. The writing was not graceful. In fact, it was downright awkward and difficult to follow sometimes. The characters were pretty much all unlikeable or they behaved inconsistently or made bad decisions. No one was overly smart or motivated. The process by which the one supposedly financially successful person in the story made his money was never provided. Instead, the reader was given all the mistakes people had made in their lives instead of the positive aspects.  Happiness was mostly only reached in the characters’ dreams.

I guess the nicest thing I can say is that some of the storyline was interesting and made me curious to know what would happen. And the pacing was good until about the ¾ mark when, due to all the doom and gloom, it became a chore to finish and I lost all interest in what happened to the characters. Oh, and then, for some unknown reason, there’s the one irksome chapter told in first person, but not by any specific character. Whereas, the rest of the book is told in third person or via online chatroom entries.

It’s not my kind of book. It’s full of dissatisfied, unfulfilled, aimless people. I prefer to read books where I can escape the harshness of reality and see some sense of hope in people that is rooted in reality. I don’t plan to participate in the virtual book club discussions because, frankly, I’m glad to be done with this one and moving on to something else.