Review for “Love Me Back” by Merritt Tierce
Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
In a nutshell: a book about a young single mother who works at a Dallas steakhouse who does lots of drugs and has sex with lots of guys. Barely got through the first 100 pages of this book before I stopped reading it completely. It wasn’t the drugs or the sex by the main character that bothered me, but the amateurish way in which this book was written. Several reviewers nailed it when they mentioned that it seems like the author is trying too hard (to push an envelope? to be edgy?) and I totally agree. We never get to know Marie, you’re stuck with the feeling like you’re reading a bunch of observations from a detached, hopeless individual. The author doesn’t help her character at all–it’s just pages upon pages of tiresome, stream of consciousness writing that goes nowhere, along with zero character development. There’s nothing raw or beautiful or outstanding here, just a young fucked up girl going about her daily coke fixes and sexual trysts with no rhyme or reason for them. There’s an awful lot of skipping around in time, as well as detailed descriptions that have nothing to do with anything. The lack of quotation marks made the writing incoherent and hard to understand. Certain paragraphs had to be read several times before it made sense. Also, the main character’s voice didn’t seem authentic to me. For a drugged out waitress who barely completed high school, her voice came off as sophisticated as an episode of “Red Shoe Diaries.” I also found it hard to believe that someone as coked up as Marie was could excel so well at her job, even if she was just waiting tables. And the corny title of “Love Me Back?” Don’t make me type another paragraph. Skip this read. Please.
29chapters.com 