Flash Point - Nancy Kress (2 Stars)

Reality TV meets a chillingly realistic version of America—and the fame game is on!

Amy had dreams of going to college, until the Collapse destroyed the economy and her future. Now she is desperate for any job that will help support her terminally ill grandmother and rebellious younger sister. When she finds herself in the running for a slot on a new reality TV show, she signs on the dotted line, despite her misgivings. 

And she’s right to have them. TLN’s Who Knows People, Baby—You? has an irresistible premise: correctly predict what the teenage cast will do in a crisis and win millions. But the network has pulled strings to make it work, using everything from 24/7 hidden cameras to life-threatening technology to flat-out rigging. Worse, every time the ratings slip, TLN ups the ante.

Soon Amy is fighting for her life—on and off camera.

Ever started a book and been like, "I want this?" Only to get to the end and be like, "Never mind, I don't want this anymore?" That happens to me sometimes. And it unfortunately happened this time.

So I saw this book at the library with this absolutely amazing cover of this girl who looked ready to kick butt, against a backdrop of neon advertisements and screens and stuff. This book was called Flash Point by Nancy Kress, who's written a couple things I liked before. And when I read the summary, I was like, "Oooh. This sounds like an action-packed, dangerous, interesting book." Maybe not in those exact words (minus the "oooh," I tend to say that when I see a book I like) but pretty close.

So I checked it out and read it.

At the beginning, I loved it. The characters were interesting, and the main girl was very sympathetic. She has a grandmother who needs serious medical care and a younger sister who depends on her. She needs this job—being on a reality tv show where the show presents you with different scenarios and viewers vote on how the contestants will react. The only thing I didn’t like was the copious usage of the f-word—copious for me is not necessarily copious for other people, but the profanity wasn’t necessary; at least not at that level—but I figured I could deal with it.

But as I continued reading, I started getting this odd nagging sensation.

The different scenarios were interesting at first—finding a dog stuck in a tree, paintballing in a warehouse, being confronted with a psychotic gunman—but then things started getting downright dangerous, like when the hotel where the contestants were staying caught fire or when they got caught in a mob. Now, the producers didn’t arrange the last two, but they didn’t have a problem using the footage, either. Which is fine. The producer of the show is the bad guy.

But what began to bother me was this sense of expectation. I was just waiting for this big, climactic thing where everyone was just like, "Gasp! They're seriously out to get us!" And it never really came. The final climax of the scenarios was actually pretty boring, and when they finally nabbed the bad guy and got her arrested, the way the contestants pulled that off was pretty blasé, too. I dunno—the book sort of built me up to this big finish that never really came.

However, Flash Point had an interesting cast of characters. There's Tommy, for instance, who's mentally handicapped. I would've liked to see more of his backstory. There's Cal and Rafe, the two love-interests, but it was pretty obvious early on who was the more worthy guy. They're both well-developed characters with their own personalities and whatnot, but Cal's kind of a putz and Rafe isn't. So it frustrated me that it took the MC until Rafe was in danger of dying near the end of the book to figure out she was in love with him, not Cal. *sigh*

There were some good plot twists, though. The girl everyone thinks is the true ally of the MC turns out to be in the pocket of the producer, whereas the girl who hates everyone is the person who ends up helping out the most—and for believable reasons that don't take forever and a decade to be revealed.

The fact that the group's initial plan to take down the producers doesn't work is nice, too, because it's realistic. First plans don't normally work the way people in books often assume they will, so it was a nice bit of realism.

The big thing I liked: the MC is psychic. A bit of a clairvoyant. They don't call it that—it's referred to as her "phantoms," when she gets these little visions that reveal things about different characters—but unfortunately that's never really extrapolated upon, and at the times where it would be most useful for her to have, it suddenly fails. I've seen in badly done books where an MC's power appears randomly when they're in danger, but I've never seen it disappear when they needed it most unless that was a part of the plot—which this wasn't.

So this review isn't very long, because there weren’t very many glaring issues with the plot or anything. It just sort of made me feel sad that I'd spent the hours I had reading it. Nancy Kress has written several books, so maybe her name got this one published when it really wasn’t the best-quality writing it could've been.

I don't know. But it felt like the author started off really trying at the beginning, only to lose interest midway through—which then began to kill my interest.

I give Flash Point 2 out of 5 stars. It had an interesting premise, and the backdrop of political and socioeconomic upheaval was great, but it seemed like the author was basically trying to tackle a million different things halfheartedly rather than narrow her focus and hit stuff with her whole effort behind it. The writing was technically sound, and the characters believable. But I ended up really not liking it, and not wanting to buy it. So much sadness inside me now. =(

Problems with this book:

— The MC's sister is a selfish brat who never gets hit with any real consequences for being a selfish brat. I realize in real life the brats don't always get their comeuppance, but this is a book! She really ought to get some kind of smack-down for her being such a witch. Instead, her dream of becoming an actress gets realized during the epilogue.

— Why does everyone have to say "f***?" We can't come up with other, more unique profanity than "fornication under consent of the king?" Really? And why does everyone have to swear when things go just the tiniest bit wrong, anyway? I have a lot of books that I love where profanity is used, but with a purpose, not just for shock value. We're not in the schoolyard anymore. Shouting words like "penis" or "f***" shouldn't get you any attention.

— The girl who really helps everyone out, who gets the bad guys put in jail at the end, and who protects everyone from all the fallout (and saves the MC and her dying grandmother during a hotel fire when she could've escaped scot-free on her own) never gets her dreams realized. She's just as sad, heartbroken, and lonely at the beginning of the book as she is at the end. Boo.

— The guy pulling the strings, the big kahuna, the head honcho behind the face of the bad lady, never gets in trouble. Never gets jail time, and though he gets sued, it doesn't really touch him. So the main baddie never suffers. This isn't really too big of a deal compared to everything else, but still!

— The "phantoms" aren't consistent, which is fine, but don't pop up when most needed ever, which you think they would at least some of the time!