Customer Reviews

Just Plain Weird

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

As the title says, this story is "Just Plain Weird". About the time you think it can't get any weirder, sure enough it does! Its one long romp from one thing to the next with a lot of weird mixed in. It has nice balance with the weird and the plausible that pretty much keeps the story close to something possible. That's what helps keep the story interesting enough that you just won't want to put it down. So make sure you have plenty of time before you start reading it.

"Spoiler Warning" After posting this review I thought maybe I should put in this warning. Some people might consider parts of the rest of my review as a spoiler by telling too much of the story plot & etc. I tried to tell enough to let you know what its about and get you interested without telling too much of it. So don't say I spoiled the story for you by telling too much if you read past this.

This was one fun read! Once I started reading it and got about 3 pages into it I just couldn't put it down till I had finished it, at about 2:30 in the morning! I haven't run across a book that has done that to me in a long time. It starts out with the teenage boy, 15 yr old Travis, from a upper lower class or lower middle class family that has some new people move in next door. When they moved in he noticed that there was a pretty girl about his age that was part of the family that moved in. It didn't take long for him to notice that things were a little weird about them. He gets curious when he notices that no one has entered or left the house after they had first moved in and that neither of the two cars in the drive have moved. So he starts watching the house with his telescope from his tree house in his back yard.

He only has one friend, of the geek variety that's pretty weird himself, that he just calls Raffles. Raffles catches Travis spying on the house next door from the tree house and talks him into going over and give them a "welcome to the neighborhood visit" to see what they can find out about them. That's when Travis gets his first good look at Eliza, the girl next door, and falls instantly in love with her. Being an average guy it takes him a while to figure out that he has fallen in love with her. It's during they're welcome visit that Raffles notices something weird about the house next door. It's bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.

The next day Travis gets to finally talk to Eliza when she comes outside and starts to mow the backyard. He ends up helping her with all the yard work and after a bit of a touchy first start they get more comfortable with each other and it isn't long before they have that feeling that they've known each other for years. After they finish the yard work Eliza takes Travis out for a drive in a nice brand new Lexus and that's when things start getting very weird.

From there things move pretty fast. They get involved with an alien artifact that is several hundred thousands of yrs old. The artifact turns out to be a space ship that has lost its crew and has been waiting all those yrs for someone to tell it what to do. So they decide to help it get back to its home by doing a little time traveling with it and end up breaking the moon, helping another set of aliens find the earth that strips the planet of all its resources and wipes out all life on the Earth.

After a lot of other side adventures they eventually get everything fixed, the time line straightened out, fix the moon, and make it so that the evil aliens don't find the earth. Putting everything pretty much back to normal before they head off looking for something else wild to do for fun.

There is one thing that should be fixed. It was very poorly edited and has several places where the words and the spelling are mixed to the point its almost dyslexic. Even the most basic word program could have corrected a lot of mistakes in its writing. Its like it was written using only "note pad". Frequently there's at least a couple of mistakes on almost every page and quit often there's several mistakes to a page. It gets to the point that its frequently distracting and breaks the flow of the reading to the point of being irritating. But these are things that are mostly the publishers fault and doesn't change the story or keep it from being a fun and entertaining read.

My 9-year old son is an avid reader. In his words, "the book wasn't as funny as I expected," but was still completely engrossing to him.

I found Just Plain Weird one of the most enjoyable books I've read in quite some time. As the title suggests, things get stranger and stranger as the story progress. Although there are very funny moments, there is also a somber message about Fate: if two people are meant to be together, they will be together, no matter what bizarre roads they end up taking to get to the same place.

Wow! Something different in the way of time travel/science fiction. Romance is there but at a "young" level -- no graphic sex, no heavy petting, etc. -- actually rather G-13 rated. This author has a great imagination and tells a very good story ---- IF you can get past the very distracting misspells, gramatical errors, and just plain sloppy editing perpetrated by the publishing company. If I were author Tom Upton, I'd demand that the book be proofread by his publisher (so obviously not done before), reprinted and resubmitted to Amazon E-books so that the next customer would be getting a great story along with a great read without all of the errors seen now.

This was a lot of fun. Did not know what to expect, but it was a great read. Sort of reminded me of a B-movie.