Fortune Academy: Year One

Anyone who has read a lot of my reviews will have noticed that I tend to be generous, and may have wondered what on Earth it would take for me to rate something as a single star. This; this is what it would take.

As background, Amazon recommended this to me on the basis of previous purchases, other reviews aren't terrible, it was on super-cheap special offer, and it's really short, so I figured I didn't have much to lose by trying it. I wasn't expecting too much, but, wow, was that an overestimate. The only saving grace is that short length - it's part one of a trilogy that would fit together to make one not very lengthy novel.

Okay, so the plot. A girl (she's about 18, I think) with vaguely Mary Sue powers goes to a school for teens with supernatural abilities, where she discovers that she's destined to save the world - but only if she can persuade five specific people to simultaneously become her boyfriend. Not a great start, conceptually, but still the sort of thing I'd normally end up giving 3 stars to. But there are two big problems, each of which knock something off.

For one, there are actual spelling and grammatical mistakes in it - the sort of word substitution that most spellcheckers won't catch. I mean, blimey, none of us are perfect, but I tend to expect more from a published book. Although maybe that's just me.

More seriously, the characters are flat as pancakes, with even the heroine not coming across as at all well-developed. They might as well all be cyphers, and there isn't much development of the world they inhabit, either. When, at the conclusion of the book, the heroine identifies one of the five people she's looking for and has sex with him, there's no emotional connection at all and no reason for us to be invested. I think they've literally only spoken to each other twice prior to this scene and that was on a completely different subject.

I mean, apparently people like this book, so if the author's making money from it, more power to her. She must be doing something right. But, when it comes to me... seriously, Amazon, you need to improve your recommendation algorithm.