Freaks of Greenfield High [Versión Kindle]

There are three things I'd like to see more of in fiction: ninja, bionics, and cyborgs. Maree Anderson has provided us with the latter, enclosing it in a YA tale of...well, coming to term with feelings, but the author takes that sap and executes it superbly so it's no way near as cheesy as it sounds.

Needless to say, the cyborg is my favourite character. (Not so much her love interest, who writes love songs. I've never been one for balladry.) Read this, and you'll understand why Jay Smith is so awesome - she's my new favourite heroine.

Now, to convince the author to create a ninja character...

Freaks of Greenfield High by Maree Anderson is a great YA cross between the Terminator movie and the Sarah Connor TV show. I devoured this book in two nights. It totally played out like a movie in my head. Anderson's descriptions of cyborg Jay were amazing. I especially loved that Jay was a girl, trying to learn how to cope with new situations while learning more about humanity. I loved how Anderson added human angst to Jay who was trying to cope with blending in while playing being human. And Tyler and his twin sister had their own problems but friendships are the underlying theme in this book. It was fast paced, riveting, real teen language that I loved and I didn't want it to end. I seriously hope Anderson will write a sequel featuring more cyborgs.

I've read the other reviews when it comes to story and I will agree with them...

However, I have to be a bit more honest about the writing of this piece and say what the others dared not to say. While I have not read any of the other books written by this author, I can honestly say that a lot more time could have been spent on this book (i.e. fixing misspelled words, grammatical errors and the occasional present tense/past tense mix-ups, as well as the lack of proper paragraph structure (that was a huge problem for me, leaving me to try to figure out on my own which character was talking a lot of the time). If you are looking for a 'smooth' read, this is not the book for you. The errors alone will throw you right out of the story and frustrate you. Despite the great story line, I struggled to get through it.

It is a shame that more time wasn't spent fixing these things, because the story itself is great. Most of this could have been caught by an editor or, at the very least, using a text to speech reader to read back each paragraph to the author so she could find the mistakes more easily.

As an aside: I will probably read the 2nd installment, just for the mere satisfaction of knowing what happens next. I hope that the writing end of it will have improved since the 1st one. Otherwise, I'll be very disappointed.

I give the following ratings:

STORY: 4 stars (would have been 5, but I had to take into consideration the explicit sex talk that I felt was unneccessary to the degree it was given for being labeled a YA genre, since 13 yr. old readers are also included in that age group. I definitely would not recommend this book to anyone under 18 for that reason.)

WRITING: 2 stars (fix the mechanics and errors to make it read more smoothly and then it will be more deserving of a higher rating. Being completely honest @ 2 stars, I am being generous.)