Book 681: Lab Partners – Mora Montgomery

What this books needs more than anything, is a good editor: there were continuity errors, there were issues with over description and there were issues with dialogue. And the saddest part is the story and characters were solid enough, but the editing really let it down. [Some of it may have been fixed in the final version of the book, but if it were me I would not have released this to reviewers with these types of errors.]

I requested a copy of this book from NetGalley based on the blurb and the cover.* I mean cute cover, adorable blurb about high school first romance, who wouldn’t want to read it right?

What I didn’t realize was that Wattpad Books is apparently a direct feeder from Wattpad, a site where you can self-publish stories in a dizzying number of genres, and that was on me not doing my research properly, so I’m going to review the book first and then go into my thoughts on the publisher. Unfortunately, I think a lot of my issues with the book are intricately intertwined on how I’m perceiving the publisher operates.

What was great about the novel? I adored Elliot’s obliviousness and selflessness and Jordan’s confidence-bordering-on-cockiness and the chemistry was really well balanced (pun[s?] intended). Montgomery may have leaned a little heavily into the bullying, self-acceptance, closet case tropes and she previously acknowledged on her site that she had many clichéd ideas (her site has been archived/removed from the Internet Archive Wayback Machine), but a lot of them really worked in her favor. I felt the supporting characters were believable for the most part with the exception of the bullies, who were cookie cutter and their motivations were also pretty cookie cutter, but for a debut novel they weren’t the worst I’ve read.

I also, thoroughly enjoyed Montgomery’s inclusion of an asexual/aromantic character, Elliot’s twin sister Eleanor, and the talk she gave to Elliot was perfection:

“Take me for example. It took a long time for me to figure this out, but I identify as asexual. And aromantic, if we’re being technical . . . That could change at some point—this stuff is all fluid. That’s the thing about sexualities: they aren’t set in stone. By identifying one way or another, you aren’t signing a contract that says this is who you are or have to be for the rest of your life. I identify as asexual now, but there may come a day when I meet somebody and fall in love with them and want to explore my sexuality. And that’s okay. Sexualities change as people do. All I know for certain is that this is the way I feel now.” (113-4)

However, I wish she would’ve connected it to Elliot a little more in that allegedly he’d never thought about boys or girls sexually or romantically and if that was the case he should’ve been googling that shit. I mean unless there’s a time shift that I missed and this is set in the past and not present day, I can’t think of any teenagers (the Amish maybe?) who don’t question, explore, google, hypothesize, their sexuality and when it comes to teen boys, come-on. So by maybe having Elliott acknowledge his own “previously-non-existent-but-still-blushes-at-sexual-innuendos” sexuality with an “oh that could’ve been me” would’ve solved this little plot hole and made the ending a little less well that’s awkward as hell

Overall, I felt Montgomery did a good job of pacing the story until the last 20-25 pages or so, it seemed to lean into the romance genre trope of happily-ever-after-here’s-a-bow-goodnight rather than the young adult teen angst will-they-won’t-they-what-happens-when-they-graduate-omg-it’s-first-love-will-it-last-forever WTF-ness at the end.

What wasn’t so great was the over-descriptions (second quote below) and the stilted (internal) dialogue (first and third quote below).

“The minute hand of the clock hanging on the wall to my right ticked slowly; it was fitting—sitting in science class feeling the actual, physical pressure of time.” (9)

“Sighing, I got up off the couch and made my way upstairs to find my charger. In my room, I flopped stomach-down on my mattress and reached for the charging cord, which was plugged into an outlet on the far side of the bed. Finding the end of it, I plugged in my phone and left it on my night stand…” (11)

“I didn’t have much reason to come north in my day-to-day life, but on occasion, my mother would take us school shopping at the mall up in Cooper Creek.” (175)

These three were pretty cringe worthy and there were a few more, but I had to stop highlighting because I didn’t want it to bog down my experience. I won’t lie though, I had to take a break after the first 15-20 pages to really think whether I wanted to power through because of these. Ultimately, it felt like the author was trying to write a slightly awkward character and that the poor editing exacerbated it making it a harder read than it should’ve been. I mean both of these examples above are internal dialogue, but unless you put on a fake posh British accent (no clue where that came from) and you use really formal language when you have your internal dialogue (maybe the author doesn’t and that’s why it’s slightly stilted), who talks like this to themselves?!

Now, for where I had REAL issues with the book was with the editing and I’m blaming the publisher for this one. In general I like the idea of Wattpad’s approach:

Through an innovative, data-driven approach not yet seen in the industry, Wattpad Books is poised to disrupt traditional publishing by harnessing data to unleash the most groundbreaking stories from Wattpad directly onto bookshelves.

But if they miss out on some pretty basic industry standards, I’m going to need them to revisit said approach. Maybe, they’re banking on the 6 million readers of Montgomery’s story as she wrote it, but that’s not great for attracting new readers.

Not only could a good editor have helped Montgomery with the dialogue issues above and the over-descriptive passages, but a good copy editor could’ve caught some of the basic continuity errors and confusing instances where one or two words (like “I said”, or “I mumbled” would’ve provided a lot of clarity. The one example that really stood out was Jordan’s apparent ability to visit the same place (aka Elliot’s house) for the first time TWICE. Okay, maybe you can explain this away by the extenuating circumstances on the first visit, but I call bullshit and say blame the copy editor! On page 94 Elliot explicitly states: “I was sitting on the edge of the sink in the upstairs bathroom of my house as Jordan assessed my injuries.” and then, just over 100 pages later we get this gem from Elliot on page 188: “This was his first time inside [my house], and I couldn’t help but become immediately self-conscious about every little thing.” Now there are a million other reasons Elliot should be worried about this second visit, so I can imagine why he’s anxious but come on copy editor, visiting again for the first time is NOT one of them.

UGH. But at that point I was invested enough in the story that I was finishing come hell or high water and I did, until I regretted it again during the birthday party scene that’s the penultimate scene of the book, see aforementioned teen sexuality comments.

Recommendation: Overall, this was a decent read for a debut novel. I enjoyed the story and characters, but overall the poor editing brought the story down for me. I’d recommend to the author (and/or the publisher) to hire a set of good editors who could’ve cleaned up a lot of these mistakes or made strategic suggestions and easily pushed this from a decent 3-ish star read to a definite 4-4.5 star read.

*I received a copy of Lab Partners from the publisher via NetGalley in return for my honest opinion. No goods or money were exchanged.

Opening Line: “‘Alright, everyone'” Ms. Dailey announced from the front of the classroom.”

Closing Line: “I even loved myself.” (Whited out to avoid spoilers, highlight to read.)