Customer Reviews

The Well

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

The story started off well enough with Cooper trapped at the bottom of a well, thrown in by his mother and subsequently rescued by his older brother. We then follow Cooper as he tries to unravel the mystery of the well, the creature trapped within it, and the curse surrounding his stepfather's vineyard.

Where the story fell flat were the analogies strewn throughout ad infinitum and pop culture references, which will probably be outmoded in a year or two, not to mention the healthy doses of cliches (an overweight donut eating cop, the evil eye, breaking up with the girlfriend to "protect" her, just to name a few). At first, they were cute, but it got old quickly.

Also, Cooper's character (and his voice, since he was narrator) came across as too over the top. All the while he's being chased and driven to the brink of madness by some creepy oozing creature and his mother is constantly trying to murder him, yet he's cracking jokes and making light of his situation. I don't know how many 14 year olds would even have the presence of mind to quip under such pressure. Unfortunately, this bright tone detracted greatly from the frightening element of the book (and I'm assuming fright was the intention).

It would have been a great book if the story hadn't been buried in so much cruft and had a more serious, darker voice. Instead it read like a low-budget farcical horror flick.

THREE QUICK POINTS:
* Point 1: This book needs another round of edits. Most of the words contained within its covers is effluvium. The repetition, the analogies, and the idioms wear a bit thin.

* Point 2: Why hasn't Cooper been eaten yet? By chapter 11, that was the question I asked. I figured if he was eaten, it would put everyone (including Cooper) out of their misery.

* Point 3: Hamlet? The only tenuous connection to this story and Hamlet was Cooper and his classmates studying the play and hating every minute of it.

SHORT SYNOPSIS:
A creature is trapped at the bottom of a well and wants to exact revenge. Cooper's mother wants to kill him and toss him to the creature. Cooper must unravel the mystery of the well creature in order to save his life, as well as the lives of those he loves.

MY THOUGHTS:
The cover's cool. The storyline sounds creepy. Superficially, this book should be right up my alley. In fact, I was poised to fall in love...then I read it and cringed (and not in a good way).

First is the story, which in and of itself is interesting and a bit chilling, though the connection to Hamlet is a stretch. No, the story is not what I had a problem with at all.

Where this book failed was the writing and the pacing. The book was filled with endless analogies, references to celebrities, TV shows, or hot products. The first few times it was cute, but by the eleventh chapter I was skimming whole chunks of text. Here are only a few examples:

"Wasn't spelling out the school's letters with all the passion of Fall Out Boy groupies." -pg 58
"Made money like a Coke machine from his jobs delivering babies and making wine." -pg 87
"It was so...ordinary, so normal, when I'd just been running from Ripley's Believe It or Not!" -pg 122
"The truth hit me in the solar plexus like a UFC fighter." -pg 127
"For a second, I could believe I was in a Manga comic or, one of those prisoner dudes in Battlefield Earth." -pg 144

Unfortunately, the pacing suffers because of it. The entire book dragged, even the action sequences which should have had me panting for air and eager to see what happens next.

Also, the character development left plenty to be desired. Cooper was too unbelievable in his actions; he was all over the place and seemed more like a stand-up comedian than a fourteen year old boy fighting for his life. And the relationship between Cooper and Megan seemed obligatory rather than organic.

I probably would have enjoyed this book more if I knew it were a deliberate farce, but it seems as though it was intended to be a legitimately chilling read and it simply didn't hit its mark. While I can't say I regret reading it, I wouldn't go out of my way to recommend it either.

The Well is the story of 14 year old Cooper Warner who is being hunted by a creature that lives at the bottom of a well on his stepfather's vineyard. This creature, though in a weakened state from living on scraps for two centuries, enlists whatever aid it can to accomplish its mission of sucking every ounce of blood from Cooper's body, then gnawing on his bones.

Premise sounds good, doesn't it? Too bad the execution left much to be desired.

I say this book should be read in small doses not because it's terrifying or even remotely disturbing--it should be consumed in stages because it's plodding and, if one is not careful, the ensuing eye-rolls could cause retinal bleeding.

The book opens with a prologue from the perspective of the well-creature telling us that he's going to do Very Bad Things when the time is right, and that leads into the first chapter where Cooper is trapped at the bottom of the well, courtesy of his own mother, with the creature breathing down his neck. Eventually he's rescued by his older brother Faulkner.

As Cooper tries to figure out the mystery of the well and his own connection to it, it seems as though he's going completely crazy. Oozing green vines pop up everywhere from school to his computer to his girlfriend's house, yet no one else can see them and the well-creature's voice whispering directly into his mind so no one else can hear it. Those were the good bits and I was curious to see what came of it.

Unfortunately, it wasn't easy.

The character development was superficial. Each character (including Cooper) resembled a cardboard cut-out and half the time, their actions and motives were inconsistent with their descriptions. In other words, it was difficult to suspend my disbelief.

From the first chapter, the story dragged; what was meant to build tension and suspense had the opposite effect. The prose and pacing were clunky due to overuse of analogies, repetition, contemporary colloquialisms, the seemingly random references to celebrities, movies, and products (that will certainly date this book in a few years), and not enough actual story progression.

Finally, the only connection to Hamlet that I saw was the students' whinging about how much they hated English and Cooper's dad for making them learn it.

Despite the negativity, the book had moments of great clarity where a story emerged and even some laugh out loud funny moments, so it wasn't a complete bust.

When all is said and done, I give the book 2.5 stars. I believe this would have made a far better 30 page short story than a 300 page novel.

I had very high expectations after reading the product description. I teach "young adults" and read many of the books they read, so this type of book is something I read quite often. "The Well" had a great deal of promise, it started out with Cooper in the bottom of the well, it should have reeled me in and kept my interest. It didn't. In my opinion it was too long, if it had been edited more it may have kept the suspense going a little better. I don't see this as a book that will hold a teenager's interest. As someone who works with this age and sees what they read, I can't recommend it.

A.J. Whitten is a pseudonym for mother and daughter writing team Shirley and Amanda Jump. Shirley is a prolific romance writer and her daughter is, well, a teenager. This does not bode well for a novel when you have a combo of a hack and an inexperienced girl narrating a story. The parts where Cooper has to deal with the creature in the well come off quite well, being equal parts creepiness and fear. I guess I would have to give Shirley credit for those parts. As for the lame cultural references and feeble attempts to be "teen-hip" with the dialogue, I would lay that solely at the feet of Amanda. Though the bookjacket references Hamlet quite heavily, the two authors are never really able to bring Shakespeare into the book with any significant rhyme or reason. Cooper happens to be reading Shakespeare and there just happens to be a novel happening so they should go together, right? right? Something else that grated on my nerves a bit was Cooper's inability to get anyone to help him. The only cop interested in the goings on is an alcoholic that can barely put one and one together, much less face a supernatural force. All in all, the book was a decent read, but the abilty of its writers ultimately doomed it to mediocrity.

...and I've only gotten about thirty pages in...and I have a bad feeling I'll never get any further. Bad sign. Very bad sign, Shakespeare-flavored storyline or no!

I've had this sitting by my bedside table, on my kitchen table, and on my desk for about 6 months now. I've read it off and on, and finally plowed through it today to knock out this review. There've just always been...more interesting things to do. The Well is supposed to be a suspenseful book for middle- to high-schoolers, but instead of suspenseful, it is predictable and falls on the slasher flick side rather than the Shyamalan side of horror.

The youth interested in suspense and horror at this age are more likely to be reading Stephen King already, and some of the subject matter in this book does not make good reading for younger readers, see SPOILERS BELOW*******************




i.e. brains spilled on the ground, pus-filled skin, baby-eating monsters, murdering moms.....


At any rate, this might be a good library rental for those older readers who are intrigued by the concept, but check it out before buying.

This book could have been one heck of a scary novel for young readers. It had a good story and some solid ideas strewn throughout it. Unfortunately, the execution was pretty bad. Humour was misplaced throughout, random references threw the reader off, and the characters made horrible decisions that, even for a horror story, were hard to believe. Overall, if you can stand some SERIOUS issues in logic, and you have plenty of patience for ridiculousness, you might be able to handle it. It could've been much better.

Romance novelist Shirley Jump and her daughter Amanda tried really hard in "The Well" which is written under the name A.J. Whitten. The book claims to be based off of Hamlet, but any relevance to that work is pretty thin.

The biggest problem with The Well is probably that it is a book without a real audience. The book is not heavy enough for an adult reader (like myself). However, it would be hard to recommend it to anyone under 14 due to teh brutal nature of some of the plot points and a smattering of profanity (which pulls up just short of the f-bomb). The most likely target of the book is teens, but I think that most teens are probably going to skip right past this and towards King and Koontz once they've reached the age where they can handle that level of horror.

Our main character Cooper is a bit too cool for the room as well. Even as he is attacked by monsters, blamed for his girlfriend's murder and being stalked by his parents, he is still full of quips. Personally, if I was a 14 year old being questioned in my girlfriend's disappearance, I probably wouldn't be making Law and Order jokes.

Anyhow, the book is a quick read and you can quickly get through the 300+ pages. The real question is why? If you are aiming towards Kid Lit, the Ridley Pearson books are still out there or you can just read through Harry Potter again. If you are aiming for real horror, there is a lifetime worth of books to read that are simply far better.

however, my 12 year old granddaughter did. Which worries me deeply and has led to a revision of this summers reading list. No sysnopis from me. I am not good at them and most of the other reviews have excellent ones. In my opinion, this books major fail was that the main character who was 14, had a 30 year old's sensiblilites. His voice was not that of an adolescent, but an adult trying way too hard to be one. And what is worse, a HIP kid. It was grating, and for me ruined the rest of the book. I don't recomend this, my granddaughter does, for, she says, "the story, not the boy". But for me, the plot wasn't enough to save the book.