Yeet That Man | AstraDaemon

STRAWBERRY MAN by Eric Shapiro made me wish death on Ben Klein before he even made his confession. Unfortunately, he is the narrator, and he is such a self-centered prick, I wonder why the others didn't just break a bottle and jam it into his neck. Needless to say, Ben is toxic, and Beth has more self-control than I do.

As far as storytelling goes, the pace is agonizingly slow and there is very little interaction between the characters. The source of the apocalyptic storm is never revealed, and yet the mere mention of the water rising up to the roof is more interesting than anything going on in Ben's head.

I don't understand the point of the story because there are plenty of guys like Ben in real life, and I'm not keen on spending my leisure time reading about one, fictional or not, justifying his BS. Maybe if aliens had caused the storm and were conducting some kind of moral experiment, I could dig into that, but...oh, well.

I've heard good things about Shapiro's work, so, even though this isn't my cup of tea, I'm going to check out one of his other stories later this month.

As always,

AstraDaemon