Book Review: Slow Storm by Danica Novgorodoff

Slow Storm - Danica Novgorodoff

The Basics

 

Ursa is a female firefighter who doesn’t have the respect of her fellow firefighters, including her brother. Rafi is an illegal immigrant who gets blamed for a crime Ursa committed in a fit of rage. With their paths crossing, their lives will be forever changed.

 

My Thoughts

 

Even my summary up there sounded gooey and pretentious, which just couldn’t be helped, because this book bleeds pretension. It wants to say something important. It wants to resonate so badly. A book should never feel as if it’s screaming for you to care, because it’s such a repulsive feeling, I fight it with every step. It’s like watching a movie that is clearly gunning for an Oscar, and it makes you cringe with the intentional weight of it.

 

I didn’t even care for the art style like I’d hoped. It was all very gestural, which is fine, but not to my tastes. There were moments when it was hard for me to tell what was happening, because the drawings weren’t clear. If you’re going to tell a visual story, it’s paramount you get your point across in your drawings, so I have to say that it failed on that level.

 

The story wasn’t bad, but it definitely didn’t go in the direction I would’ve wanted it to. It sets itself up for intrigue, and there is none. There could’ve been some very explosive drama, and there wasn’t. It just quietly petered out, and I felt robbed. There was a powerful story here, and a much weaker one was the story that got told.

 

If anything, I think my rating is for the setup. Otherwise, it should be skipped.

 

Final Rating

 

2/5