Friday, November 6, 2009

Cookie Cutter Characters

Dirty Little Angels
By Chris Tusa
Pdf review copy 170 pages
Publisher: Livingston Press (2009)
Rated 3 stars of 5 possible

Dirty Little Angels
is the story of a dysfunctional family living in the slums of New Orleans. The story is somewhat dark and suspensful at points... While this story is fiction, it is all too accurately reflcted in real life. Financial hardship, adultry, drug usage, psychotic instability and more are depicted front and center in this book. Tragically, none of the characters seems willing to accept responsibility for or try to correct the deficits in their characters.

Aside from being set in the south and the dark tinge to the plot, this novel does not stand comparison with To Kill a Mocking Bird or any contemporary literature of which I'm aware. Other novels have at least some characters that the reader can like and care about, but the characters in Dirty Little Angels are all the same - flawed and black-hearted with few redeeming characteristics that I could find.

Sixteen year-old Hailey Trosclair is no different from the other characters in that she has her own twisted sense of right and wrong. She values her family but is far too willing to cross the faint line between legal and illegal, between sanity and insanity.  A few times, I really wanted to slap her silly; hanging out with the wrong sort of people just about got her what she deserved.  If this story had gone on much longer, I could see everyone caught in the downward spiral of self-destruction.

This review is simultaneously published on Amazon.com, Dragonviews, and LibraryThing.

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