Sapphire

By: Bryan W. Alaspa

Narrated by: Ed Altman

Length: 9 hrs and 34 mins

Publisher's summary

Jimmy Parker is a typical high school student. Unpopular with the girls and picked on by the boys, he's just trying to survive long enough to escape the tiny Pennsylvanian town of Knorr.

With Jimmy and his friend, George, heading to the school dance, they expect nothing but the usual ritual humiliation from their peers. But when a girl in a brilliant blue dress enters their lives at the side of a lonely old bridge…everything changes.

Her name is Sapphire, and she is the most alluring girl that Jimmy has ever met. Yet, there is something strange about her; something different. Why has he never seen her at school? Why does she only want to meet up near the bridge? And why does everybody keep warning Jimmy to stay away from her?

Before long, Jimmy is plunged into a decades-old mystery. The town of Knorr has many secrets; some held by powerful men. Men that would do anything to keep them from getting out. Something dark happened one night in Knorr, and now Jimmy is a part of it whether he likes it or not. And Sapphire holds the key to understanding it all. Jimmy discovers that his bond with the mysterious girl creates a unique power between them. A power that bridges time, space, and even dimensions. It is the one thing that could save them both. Because sometimes the most powerful force on Earth is love.

©2013 Bryan W. Alaspa (P)2013 Bryan W. Alaspa

I should have know

Would you try another book from Bryan W. Alaspa and/or Ed Altman?

Not a chance

Has Sapphire turned you off from other books in this genre?

No. The genre is amazing; it's this book that is a problem.

How did the narrator detract from the book?

He didn't exactly. I think I might be unfairly judging him simply for being willing to read this out loud.

If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from Sapphire?

The majority of the first hundred pages could be edited, not cut. I don't need to know how many times Jimmy smiles in a single interaction with Sapphire, or that he's eating cereal for breakfast, or what he thought of when he woke up. I'm not sure why this author adds so many innocuous details. They might somehow make the author understand his fictional world better, but they don't help me as a reader. They bog down the narrative and keep the story from evolving.

Any additional comments?

I really don't like to bash other people's work because I am a writer, too, and I know it's a difficult business. That said, I can't believe how little the author trusts the reader. So many things are described and detailed that reading the words is like swimming through Jell-O. I just wanted something to happen. I didn't want to know that Jimmy was getting dressed for the prom. I didn't want a bunch of back story in the first chapter. I certainly didn't want the cliches and the countless uses of smile, turn, look, said, and other mostly meaningless words. I couldn't finish listening to this book. In the first hour, so little happened and so many bad sentences and repeated words appeared that I had to stop.