Review: Sasha vs the Whole Wide World (and Dragons) (Set in the

Sasha vs the Whole Wide World (and Dragons) (Set in the by Rachel Taylor Thompson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is (apart from the copy editing, which I'll mention later) a sound piece of work. The characters have plenty of backstory, which makes them feel like they didn't start existing in Chapter 1, and also makes sense of their actions and feelings during the book. Relationships matter, a lot, especially family for the protagonist, and most of the relationships are not straightforwardly like or dislike, trust or distrust; they're messy and complicated, like real relationships. This is a level I don't see often in first books.

I definitely called what would happen with the money side of things well in advance. Money is an obsession of the protagonist, since her family is struggling with debt; she's working four jobs to try to save for college, but has to keep paying off overdue mortgage payments with the money instead. I predicted both that (view spoiler)[she would have to give up the McGuffin without being paid for it, because it was the right thing to do (hide spoiler)] and that (view spoiler)[she would still make money out of the publicity surrounding it, just not the obscene amounts selling the McGuffin would have brought (hide spoiler)]. The end point of the romance plot was also predictable, because after all, romance plots all come out the same way, though it did have a rocky road to get there, and was well thought out and believable in its evolutions. Having said that, it wasn't a made-from-box-mix, totally predictable plot at all, and it kept me thoroughly engaged, even gripped, throughout. Most of the book consists of a road trip, taken while being hunted, not knowing who to trust or how to escape pursuit, which keeps the tension high. There's constant comic relief, not only from the snark of the protagonist (which isn't cruel), but from the antics of the three little dogs she has stolen from one of her jobs for reasons that are a bit glossed over. I think it's to make it more believable that she's been kidnapped, but... it doesn't, really. (view spoiler)[Perhaps the McGuffin got involved in manipulating events earlier than it seemed to? (hide spoiler)]

The author, like an increasing number of authors these days, is under the mistaken impression that it's correct to put a hyphen between an adjective and the noun it's modifying. This is most noticeable with "magical-creatures," because that's the pair that occurs most frequently, but it's a more widespread problem, and she also hyphenates numerous phrases that shouldn't be hyphenated either. At least once, in a compound adjective (which is almost the only place you should hyphenate), she doesn't hyphenate all the words in the phrase. It's good that authors want to use more punctuation, but not that they don't know where to put it. Otherwise, there are a couple of the usual errors, but most of them don't occur frequently, and some, but by no means all, of the apostrophes are in the right place. An editor is credited, but that may or may not be a copy editor. I've seen way worse, but the excess hyphens were a distraction.

Usual disclaimers: I received a pre-publication review copy, and more editing may happen before publication. Also, many people don't know or care how punctuation works, but for those readers who do, I give specifics in my reviews so they can decide how much it will reduce their enjoyment.

It's to the credit of the author that, even though the punctuation annoyed me, I was still strongly gripped by the plot and was cheering for the protagonist all the way along. Recommended.

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