DNF Round Up || July

I'm hoping this won't turn into a regular feature. But who knows.

Coming close on the heels of last week's post about abandoning books, I thought I'd do a little round up of the three books I didn't finish this month. (Which prompted that whole post in the first place.)



On the Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta
DNF @ ~50 pages

Taylor is leader of the boarders at the Jellicoe School. She has to keep the upper hand in the territory wars and deal with Jonah Griggs - the enigmatic leader of the cadets, and someone she thought she would never see again.

And now Hannah, the person Taylor had come to rely on, has disappeared. Taylor's only clue is a manuscript about five kids who lived in Jellicoe eighteen years ago. She needs to find out more, but this means confronting her own story, making sense of her strange, recurring dream, and finding her mother - who abandoned her on the Jellicoe Road.

I just could not get into this book. It floats multiple perspectives past you without really bothering to make any distinction between them--leading me to feel very confused. And not in that intriguing "ooh what's happening?" kind of way. But in that "wait a second, did I read that wrong?" kind of way.

It never grabbed me. It didn't make me want to read on. People assure me that it gets better, especially as things start to come together. So maybe I'll consent to try it some other time, but I'm marking it as abandoned for now and have returned it to the library.




Feed by MT Anderson
DNF @ ~50 pages

Spending time partying on the moon and riding around in his "upcar," Titus is an average teen of the future, complete with a computer chip implant -- the "Feed" -- that lets corporate marketers and government agencies broadcast directly into his brain. Then Titus meets Violet, and an anti-Feed hacker shuts down their Feeds for a short time; but when Violet's Feed is seriously damaged, she begins spouting some radical ideas.

Every time I have tried classic dystopian cyberpunk, it's never worked out well for me. Here it was the colloquial and juvenile writing that did me in. I've seen a few people compare it to A Clockwork Orange in terms of language, and I just don't know if that's my thing.

I also feel like I know where this whole thing is going. I mean, I could be wrong, but it seemed like it was on a fairly predictable path.

I've seen an audiobook mentioned, which might help, so I might try that later. But for now, abandoned and my copy donated. (I need the bookshelf space.)




Don't Turn Around (PERSEFoNE #1) by Michelle Gagnon
DNF @ ~110 pages

Sixteen-year-old Noa has been a victim of the system ever since her parents died. Now living off the grid and trusting no one, she uses her hacking skills to stay anonymous and alone. But when she wakes up on a table in a warehouse with an IV in her arm and no memory of how she got there, Noa starts to wish she had someone on her side.

Enter Peter Gregory. A rich kid and the leader of a hacker alliance, Peter needs people with Noa’s talents on his team. Especially after a shady corporation threatens his life in no uncertain terms. But what Noa and Peter don’t realize is that Noa holds the key to a terrible secret, and there are those who’d stop at nothing to silence her for good.

So apparently I can't read, because for some reason I thought this would be like this government-crackdown dystopian where you're monitored all the time and then some teens decide to go off the grid. Which is not what this is about at all.

The mystery here is compelling enough, but the whole thing suffers from mediocre writing. Do I want to find out what happens? Sure. Could I plow through this in a few hours to do so? Sure. But I'd be just as happy reading spoilers online for all I care about these characters.

There were multiple POV changes in a chapter as well, which I found really jarring. I know it was the book trying to create tension, but it didn't feel necessary. Chalk it up to mediocre writing again. Anyway, I'm probably not going to keep this one either.


And there we have it. My DNF books for July. Any thoughts about these books or DNFs in general? Have you abandoned any books lately? Let's chat in the comments!