And every single new character introduced in this book. Where this becomes apparent is, well, every single scene change found in this book. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there.- Anton Chekhov If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. Remove everything that has no relevance to the story. To use the nice, simple definition from wikipedia, Chekhov's gun is a dramatic principle that every memorable element in a fictional story must be necessary and irreplaceable, and any that are not should be removed. I don't know Mary Calmes' educational background, but I think it's safe to say she missed the day her Lit professor lectured on the concept of Chekhov's Gun. And by "hot mess," I am specifically referring to this: I liked this book, despite the fact that it is one hot mess. Original Review written about 16 months ago: ETA: Scroll down to find an update to my original review and the reason I changed my star rating from a 3 to a 4
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