Review: The Word Exchange

Title: The Word Exchange

Author: Alena Graedon

Genre: Science Fiction

Published: April 8, 2014

I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This book is supposed to take place in the not to distant future with the handheld Memes (high tech cell phones) making decisions for you so you don't need to work so hard. One program in the Memes was the word exchange. If you couldn't come up with a word it would replace it with another word. This led to the "word flu". Anana's father, Doug, disappeared one day. Doug was anti-Meme. Anana and a co-worker Bart tried to find him along with figuring out what was happening with the word flu.

I must say up front I did not actually finish this book. I tried I really did, but reading this book felt like I was wading through a pond of mud. I could see the other side, but no matter how much I tried I was unable to get there.

It was to verbose. Honestly the author would you ten large words to describe something when one three letter word would have worked just as well. The main character Anana's voice did not sound authentic. She was an artist working for her father as an assistant. Words were not her chosen field, but her voice sounded similar to Bart's. It did not feel authentic and made it harder stay in the story.

Characters kept warning Anana to not do something, then as soon as she was alone that would be the first thing she would do. In a couple of instances she didn't even wait to be alone. I kept wondering if she didn't remember the consequences from the last time she didn't take other character's advice or was she really that stupid?

There was a lot happening within the story. What were they really trying to accomplish? Were they trying to find her father? Stop the word flu? Was it just a story so Anana could obsess over her ex-boyfriend? or was it a story so Bart could obsess about how perfect he thought Anana was?

Since I did not finish the book I am not going to rate it.