Crewel (Crewel World #1) - Gennifer Albin (Review)

Hardcover, 368 pages
Expected publication: October 16th 2012 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)
Source: Borrowed ARC from Lindsey

Synopsis:

Incapable. Awkward. Artless.

That’s what the other girls whisper behind her back. But sixteen year-old Adelice Lewys has a secret: she wants to fail.

Gifted with the ability to weave time with matter, she’s exactly what the Guild is looking for, and in the world of Arras, being chosen as a Spinster is everything a girl could want. It means privilege, eternal beauty, and being something other than a secretary. It also means the power to embroider the very fabric of life. But if controlling what people eat, where they live and how many children they have is the price of having it all, Adelice isn’t interested.

Not that her feelings matter, because she slipped and wove a moment at testing, and they’re coming for her—tonight.

Now she has one hour to eat her mom’s overcooked pot roast. One hour to listen to her sister’s academy gossip and laugh at her Dad’s stupid jokes. One hour to pretend everything’s okay. And one hour to escape.

Because once you become a Spinster, there’s no turning back.

Review:

Let’s do something different with this review. Usually my reviews are lines and lines of prose that nobody probably even reads but this time, I shall utilize bullet points to make my…er…points. This will streamline the review and hopefully make it more enjoyable for anyone who chooses to read it.

1. There is a propensity in recent novels aimed at young adult audiences to focus a bit obsessively on the material aspect of life. Or rather, if I’m going to be blunt, they go on and on and on about dresses and cosmetics, who’s wearing what, how much it costs etc etc. Crewel is no different in that regard. Of course the main character is against such lavish attention to the superficial aspect of life but fact remains that many, many pages are sacrificed to descriptions about who is wearing what.
2. Where is the weaving, man? There are photo shoots, parties, booze, interviews but I came into this expecting there to be some weaving. Why isn’t there more weaving?
3. The love triangle is ridiculous. The little twist at the end is even more ridiculous. The two boys that Adelice kisses? One of them was fascinating but his appeal diminished somewhat by his attraction to Adelice. Someone who is supposedly mature being so attracted to Adelice? Hmm…I wasn’t impressed.
4. The author seems confused about the antagonist because at one point in the novel, Adelice says that her hatred of him must be misplaced or misdirected. Heh. I found him appropriately creepy though. I would have liked the ambiguity about his person to be gon.
5. Adelice is snarky and I like snark but at the same time, I felt that she was inappropriately snarky. Because the tragedy which she lived through is so humungous that getting through it and functioning like a normal human being becomes difficult. Yes, I understand she took a drug that numbed her initial feelings but when the drug has worn off, I demand emotional chaos. I mean, come on.
6. The mean girl is kinda ridiculous too. I understood, somewhat, the mean girl’s motivations but I never understood why she blamed Adelice for something that was quite clearly not her fault. She seemed a gratuitous presence thrown into the narrative for flavor. And the other mean…woman? Mmmreh.

This book, look, I’m not a hater. I really am not. This book had a very interesting premise but I found the execution to be lacking. Specially where the weaving part is concerned. I thought Adelice’s weaving portions were interesting. I also liked how homosexuality was addressed and kudos to the author for taking a contemporary issue and making it one of the themes of the novel. Bravo. I also thought that the invention of the “world” itself, how it exists, why it exists is also splendidly innovative. The action in my opinion was too saturated at the end of the novel and not spread out throughout the length of the novel as I would have liked it to be. However, this is bound to appeal to anyone who looks for an entertaining story but not to people who want logic, who want something more than the usual paranormal. It has its good parts and its not so good parts. It just didn’t appeal to me as much as I wanted it to.

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