Review: TESSA

TESSA by Kfir Luzzatto
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

So, I had some issues.

Firstly is the squick factor of a middle-aged man writing a highly sexualized 17-year-old girl as protagonist and narrator.

Secondly, while the English is fluent, it is not quite completely idiomatic. It certainly doesn't read as the language of an American teenager; it's quite stiff at times.

And then there's Tessa herself: she's manipulative, by her own admission, and though she has some moral awareness and moral qualms, she doesn't seem to find it too difficult to overcome them. I didn't much enjoy following her as a protagonist.

Had the story been anything out of the ordinary - had the premise been a bit more convincing or less dependent on good fortune and the protagonist being Special, had the thriller elements been less matter-of-fact and more exciting, had the secondary characters had more depth to them - it might have made up for the other flaws. Sadly, this wasn't the case; it was all a bit average.

View all my reviews