I want different Lab Partners

 

Sometimes, when I want to read a book, there’s a very specific “no think-y” vibe that I want. And in that I mean something that’s not going to require me to use my brain, that’s going to have a predictable plot and an ending I can see coming from just reading the blurb. Lab Partners by M. Montgomery, I assumed was going to be that exact kind of book, so that’s the exact mindset I went into reading it with.

So, actually opened the book before I read the blurb. And you know what I saw when I opened the book? “Wattpad Books”. That immediately made me think, “Oh, so we’re getting some fanfiction-y vibes from this book then?” And I don’t mean that as a drag by any means. I mean it in the sense that it just reaffirmed what I assumed I was going to get from the cover, and where is literally says, “Love is a chemical reaction”. Like, that was what made me assume I was going to get some trope-heavy, maybe clichéd, romance book with a predictable plot.

But to get into the blurbarella. When Elliot becomes lab partners with the new boy at school, Jordan, his life suddenly becomes much more interesting. He’s never met anyone like Jordan before – someone so good looking, charming and smart. And soon school becomes way more than just boring lectures and bad cafeteria nachos. For the first time ever, Elliot can’t wait to go to Chemistry class. The butterflies Elliot has around Jordan make sense when Jordan kisses him, but that’s when everything else stops making sense! And there is another paragraph, but basically, it gave me the idea that perhaps Elliot then didn’t know he was into guys or was maybe flirting with the idea that he did, but the kiss affirmed it. I thought that maybe it would be something like that.

Anyway, chapter one opens up with Elliot in Chemistry… shocker. But we’re told it’s his first college-level course, and harder than he was used to, since school was apparently easy for him. I will say, there was a bit of telling, instead of showing, in this first chapter. There’s a moment where we’re told people getting into Elliot’s personal space makes him uncomfortable, and that’s something that could have easily been shown to us. And then, when I said I was assuming I’d get fanfiction-y vibes from this, I was kind of right. But also, very Disney channel original movie vibes. There’s this bully, who goes after Elliot in the first chapter, and it’s very Disney channel bully vibes. And this first chapter definitely read fanfiction-y like I thought it would. Still Elliot has a twin sister, Eleanor, that’s smarter than him, and pretty much the only thing he’s interested in is cooking, when the rest of his family are super analytical. Still, nothing much happens in chapter two, we’re introduced to Elliot’s family properly, and he makes spaghetti, but we get a really detailed explanation of his process of how he made it.

So, that whole Disney channel vibe really jumps out in the fourth chapter, when Elliot and Jordan are talking about bullies. As I was reading it, it did make me realise that the conversations didn’t always feel like real conversations. It was like some of the dialogue had just been put in the move the book along and wasn’t people talking. Almost like the author had written down what they wanted the characters to say, but never edited the words, so they  never actually sounded like a character’s voice, and instead, just ended up sounding like an idea. And I’m not going to spoil the ending, but I will say that the conflict resolution felt very Disney channel as well.

Elliot at one point also tells Jordan that he probably shouldn’t hang out with him since he (Elliot) is an outcast, and if Jordan hangs out with him, he’ll end up as one too. Now I can’t lie, when I read that, it came off very much like Jughead Jones’ “I’m a weirdo” monologue from Riverdale, and it may have given me a little chuckle.

When Elliot and Jordan finally become friends, the bullies, Morgan, Cole and Nate, start bullying Elliot now saying that he’s gay. At one point they start beating him up, but Cole ends up stopping them. I will say, the bullies, for the most part, were literally just bullies for the sake of being bullies. You find out, through being told – also, as I got further into this book, I noticed it had just an abundance of telling, instead of showing. But you get told why Nate is a bully, but even then, nothing happens with his character, he still just stays a bully. Like, so many of the characters just felt like cardboard cut-outs of characters. We also get told that Cole has a secret, and while he’s bullying Elliot, he holds back a couple of times. I don’t need to tell you his secret, this book is clichéd to the point you can guess it before the reveal.

To talk about the abundance of telling, specifcally, I’ll include on paragraph from page 140:

“I wanted to cry from the conflicting emotions that were travelling through me all at once. My head was telling me that everything was wrong, but my heart was filled with so much warmth that it felt close to bursting. I was thinking too much. I needed to stop thinking. I did my best to rid the doubts from my mind and tried to focus on him.”

This is what I meant about the abundance of telling. Because the first sentence tells us what’s happening, and then the next sentence reiterates the same point. If the first sentence was completely removed, and the words, “I wanted to cry”, were moved to be their own sentence after the close to bursting sentence, then we would have been shown just how intense what Elliot is feeling is, instead of being told. Then I’d have removed the “I was thinking too much” sentence, because they’re unnecessary words. The writing in this book is very inconsistent, and I suppose that ties back to the point I made before about how this reads as more of an idea, than an actual book, because the paragraph that comes after the one I just criticised is one of when Elliot and Jordan kiss, and it’s a really good one – really well written.

There were also a bunch of times where characters did something in an emotion. For example, there were a few times where Elliot “huffed in frustration”, one time where he “turned pink in embarrassment”. And now it’s time for me to huff in frustration, because the author didn’t need to add the “in whatever emotion”. It was like the author didn’t trust that the readers could pick up on emotions themselves.

So, yeah… That was Lab Partners. It was clichéd and predictable. Those two things, to me, aren’t necessarily bad, since I always say there’s comfort in predictability. And the way it’s written was also very inconsistent. Like, some of it did slay, I’ll give it that, and it approached a lot of good conversations – bullying in schools, coming out. But the way this book approached all of the topics was in the most predictable way it could have. It was like this book picked up a textbook on all of those topics and just copied what was in the textbook without trying to make them at least somewhat original. Even though I went into this knowing it would be a “no think-y” book, it still wasn’t great, sadly.

Okay, bye!