A review by saramackenzi
The Angel Experiment by James Patterson
adventurous
dark
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.0
I originally read this book back in the 5th grade and thought it was the epitome of A+ content. Now that it’s been 10+ years I decided to give it another read because I really couldn’t remember anything that happened. Unfortunately, this book didn’t age well for me.
I was really excited to pick this book back up because looking at the outside it checks a lot of the boxes that I look for in books. Unfortunately, it fell flat for me when it came to the characters, plot points, writing choices, and just the content in general.
Looking at the characters, they felt very one-dimensional. Even though the story is told from Max’s pov I still expected to learn more about the other characters but all I learned was one or two points that labeled the characters for the entirety of the book. Fang is the brooding teenager who will no doubt be a love interest because this was the early 2000’s and that was the thing. Nudge cares a lot for everyone? (I honestly don’t remember anything about her). Iggy is blind but has good hearing. Gasman passes a lot of gas and is Angel's brother. And Angel is the baby who Max adores but isn’t as helpless as everyone thinks. Now looking at our girl Max. . .she’s basically the mom of the group (which is repeated 50 times throughout) and takes care of everyone like she’s in her 20’s when she’s only 14 and because of her age, she has these attempts of being edgy and not like other girls. I honestly didn’t really care for her but I remember 9 year old me wanted to be her so.
There were several things regarding the plot that just didn’t make sense or I didn’t like.
For starters, where did they put their wings? There’s a point in the book where Max needs to show her wings to someone and they have to look underneath her shirt to see them, this doesn’t make sense at all considering it was already stated that her wings were 13 feet wide so how the heck did they fit under the 14-year-old’s shirt??
The entire time the Flock is being chased by Erasers and it honestly got old. When they did get into fights with them they were extremely short and felt anticlimactic. I just wish they would have been done better considering this was basically half the too-long book.
Another big point was about finding the Institute and for the life of me, I don’t think we ever figured out what this place actually was. For this being such a huge point I feel like we should’ve been given an explanation.
There were also several filler things put in that could have just been left out. The book didn’t need to be dragged out any longer.
At the end of the book, there was some extra content which included blog entries from Fang. I’m sorry what?? These characters are constantly on the run and are barely able to feed themselves but somehow Fang has access to technology enough that he can consistently update his blog.
Now his writing choices. Can someone please explain to me why Patterson feels the need to make his chapters 3 pages long?? It doesn’t make sense in the slightest that the chapter gets cut off where it does. I don’t know if it’s some strategy to make me feel like I’m reading more but at over 100 chapters the only thing I felt was annoyance that the story wasn’t done yet.
I listened to the audiobook for over half the book and then ended up picking up my physical copy of the book. The first thing I realized was that my audiobook was skipping as if there was a scratch in a disc. Not really sure why this was but beware of that if you plan to borrow from Libby. I also noticed the two copies were different from each other. I know occasionally a line or two are skipped but in this case, it was whole chapters. The main part I noticed was the restaurant scene. In the book, they go to a nice restaurant and the manager comes and talks to them but I never got this in the audiobook. The only scene I got in the audiobook that involved a restaurant was a fast-food place where Erasers run them out. I have no clue if this also happens in the book because I had no desire to search and couldn’t tell you what chapter to even look at because the audiobook never mentioned them.
I honestly wish I would have liked this more. I think the premise of it was super interesting but the execution of it just wasn’t for me. I think I would have been able to deal with the plot issues better if it hadn’t been for the lack of character depth. I’m really not sure if I would have wanted to finish the book if it hadn’t been for the audiobook. I think a beginner reader who isn’t above the age of 14 would have better luck with it.
I was really excited to pick this book back up because looking at the outside it checks a lot of the boxes that I look for in books. Unfortunately, it fell flat for me when it came to the characters, plot points, writing choices, and just the content in general.
Looking at the characters, they felt very one-dimensional. Even though the story is told from Max’s pov I still expected to learn more about the other characters but all I learned was one or two points that labeled the characters for the entirety of the book. Fang is the brooding teenager who will no doubt be a love interest because this was the early 2000’s and that was the thing. Nudge cares a lot for everyone? (I honestly don’t remember anything about her). Iggy is blind but has good hearing. Gasman passes a lot of gas and is Angel's brother. And Angel is the baby who Max adores but isn’t as helpless as everyone thinks. Now looking at our girl Max. . .she’s basically the mom of the group (which is repeated 50 times throughout) and takes care of everyone like she’s in her 20’s when she’s only 14 and because of her age, she has these attempts of being edgy and not like other girls. I honestly didn’t really care for her but I remember 9 year old me wanted to be her so.
There were several things regarding the plot that just didn’t make sense or I didn’t like.
For starters, where did they put their wings? There’s a point in the book where Max needs to show her wings to someone and they have to look underneath her shirt to see them, this doesn’t make sense at all considering it was already stated that her wings were 13 feet wide so how the heck did they fit under the 14-year-old’s shirt??
The entire time the Flock is being chased by Erasers and it honestly got old. When they did get into fights with them they were extremely short and felt anticlimactic. I just wish they would have been done better considering this was basically half the too-long book.
Another big point was about finding the Institute and for the life of me, I don’t think we ever figured out what this place actually was. For this being such a huge point I feel like we should’ve been given an explanation.
There were also several filler things put in that could have just been left out. The book didn’t need to be dragged out any longer.
At the end of the book, there was some extra content which included blog entries from Fang. I’m sorry what?? These characters are constantly on the run and are barely able to feed themselves but somehow Fang has access to technology enough that he can consistently update his blog.
Now his writing choices. Can someone please explain to me why Patterson feels the need to make his chapters 3 pages long?? It doesn’t make sense in the slightest that the chapter gets cut off where it does. I don’t know if it’s some strategy to make me feel like I’m reading more but at over 100 chapters the only thing I felt was annoyance that the story wasn’t done yet.
I listened to the audiobook for over half the book and then ended up picking up my physical copy of the book. The first thing I realized was that my audiobook was skipping as if there was a scratch in a disc. Not really sure why this was but beware of that if you plan to borrow from Libby. I also noticed the two copies were different from each other. I know occasionally a line or two are skipped but in this case, it was whole chapters. The main part I noticed was the restaurant scene. In the book, they go to a nice restaurant and the manager comes and talks to them but I never got this in the audiobook. The only scene I got in the audiobook that involved a restaurant was a fast-food place where Erasers run them out. I have no clue if this also happens in the book because I had no desire to search and couldn’t tell you what chapter to even look at because the audiobook never mentioned them.
I honestly wish I would have liked this more. I think the premise of it was super interesting but the execution of it just wasn’t for me. I think I would have been able to deal with the plot issues better if it hadn’t been for the lack of character depth. I’m really not sure if I would have wanted to finish the book if it hadn’t been for the audiobook. I think a beginner reader who isn’t above the age of 14 would have better luck with it.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Blood, Child abuse, Death, Emotional abuse, Kidnapping, and Violence