A very readable book with strong characters

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jane m. Avatar

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The Art of Escaping is a tricky one for me to review. Author Erin Callahan has done a spectacular job of creating characters who are well-developed and real. I cared about main characters Mattie and Will, but I also really liked a lot of the supporting cast here. I often feel like supporting characters in YA books are bland without much personality, but that was not the case here -- even minor characters had some real pizzazz.

Unfortunately, I didn't care for the pacing of this book or the way the chapters alternated. Some chapters span part of a day, and other times chapters span weeks. I would have have preferred the timeline to run a little more evenly -- at times it felt like stuff just gets skipped over for convenience. I wished that missing time was spent delving into Will's life a bit more, because I would argue that his story is actually the more compelling of the two.

As much as I love (love!) alternating perspectives, I really dislike it when they're done unevenly. Here, the true main character is Mattie, and most of the chapters are focused on her story. Every now and then, though, a chapter from Will's perspective is thrown in with no seeming rhyme nor rhythm. This was really frustrating for me, and I think a lot of depth was lost by not balancing the story out between the two characters a bit better.

Even with the issues I had with the pacing and balance, this was still a very readable book and the fact that the author made me care about these characters speaks to her talent. I'll definitely be watching for more from Callahan in the future.