The Story Traveler by Max Candee

DESCRIPTION:

Stories aren’t real ... or are they?

Fifteen-year-old Haley Spade is enrolled in an exclusive boarding school in Connecticut. This school has a grim mythology: Everyone believes that the angry ghosts of six students who committed suicide decades ago still haunt its halls.

On a dare, Haley spends a night wandering through the “haunted” building. But she takes a wrong turn into a dizzying adventure of stories made real, stories within stories, worlds within worlds. She encounters magical creatures like the King of the Cats, a shapeshifting crow, elves—and a menace far more terrifying than any ghost. 

Suspenseful, fast and rooted in several fairy tales, The Story Traveler captures our yearning to be more than what we are. Haley’s bizarre journey will leave her and the reader wondering: What is reality?

REVIEW:

It is YA novel, and adventure story and brilliant concept executed far worse than it deserves. If Max Candee had dared to go for a full grown concept on the matter it would have blown my mind away. I was so excited about reading the novel. You have no idea! 

The whole idea of worlds being build out of stories on different levels and the demon destroying them, to get to the grand story and re-create the world! Are you kidding me: Brilliant doesn't begin to cover it!

And then the messiness is granted permission to enter the room and spoil all the fun!

Let's start with the characters. The main character Haley... She started off being alright.But as the story went along, her personality came off. She became inconsistent. She's nice, but then she's not. She's brave but then she's not. Like, hello?? I need finality here! She didn't have the magic in her. By the end of the novel I was struggling to keep up with her bullshit. I won't even comment on the dialogue... it was worse than OITNB. I know, most people would kill me for saying this, but it is true. I am an old-fashioned gall and I need my awesome, meaningful, twisted, funny and engaging dialogues. Especially in a YA novel, because they teach young adults so much. Hell, if it wasn't for good dialogues and wittiness I wouldn't be the crazy and slightly overly sarcastic person I am right now.

Jack, Tom, Dorian they were all so terribly out of character that it was painful to read through. I kept hoping it will go better, but it didn't. I constant flat line!

And the romance... Jesus Christ, I know teenage girls are obsessed with it, I was a teen after all, but having such a wonderful idea to explore why did you even had to go for a love story?! Why?!! A sloppy one to that. It wasn't in place and it was as fake as a dollar bill napkin! Cheap,useless and see-through.

Well the word building was good.  "That I can tell you. But the pacing was so off - like, at first everything was in such a fast pace. It was as if a whirlwind came across the pages and all of a sudden, I'm reading about how Haley has taken the dare. Um...WHAT? Last time I checked, she was still moving in. How the hell has she knew about her classmates and the other girls already? " (Joyce (The Book Harpy))

In short: Max Candee, what the hell did you do? Why did you do it? What were you thinking? Especially with the ending... I get that you wanted to probably go for series, but you could have done it so much better, dude! 

I will not recommend it to anyone. It wore off my patience so bad, that I needed to punch sth.

Not even one Fox for it, doesn't deserve my Fox stamp, sorry!