Crashers

The most laudable thing that can be said about Crashers is that it's fun. And it definitely is that – lazy brain candy on a Saturday afternoon/Law and Order marathon sort of fun. It's fast-paced romp, with lots of action, a plot-twist or two and lots of beautiful, charismatic characters.

And that's where the praise ends. This reads like a script for a summer movie or a CSI “Special Episode.” It is filled with an appropriately diverse cast (for some, unknown, reason the ethnic background of even the most trivial of characters is given. While the supporting cast contains a Korean man, three African Americans, a Brit, an Israeli, a handful of Irish men, an Arab American and an Asian American, the main cast is white – very TV.) More time is spent describing how beautiful, handsome, rugged and sexy each character is than really giving any personality, which makes it difficult to tell who's talking without dialogue tags.

The action is really designed to be cinematic. I had a lot of fun picturing in my head how the scenes would look, but there aren't really any twists to engage the imagination of the reader.

But, where the Crashers really falls down is the writing. As I said, the plot is fun, the characters are pretty, there's lots of action, overall it would be about as enjoyable as a weak Dan Brown novel, if not for the terrible writing. To be fair, I received an advance copy, which I assume (from the number of typos) is still undergoing some editing. That being said, the dangling participles, heavy handed dialogue-tagging and awkward exposition and narration were so distracting that finishing the book was a chore that I completed because I got the book from First Reads. Had I bought the book, I probably would have given up on it.

When I first started reading this book, I hated it. It was boring, I hated Haynes' characters and how he introduced them, the plot didn't interest me much. As it went on, however, I started to feel more interested in the plot and the characters. The twists and turns, especially in the last third of the book, are definitely worth for!

I would give this book 3.5 stars if I could. It reminded me a little bit of NCIS:LA.