Charlie St. Cloud

Over spring break I read the book Charlie St. Cloud by Ben Sherwood. Prior to reading the book I saw the movie (which I thought was very well scripted and preformed) and was intrigued to see if the book was any better. Unfortunately, I cannot say that the book was better than the movie. I feel the main reason for this is due to the point of view the story is told from. The story is told from 3rd person point of view and I feel that this choice limited the amount of emotion that could be presented to the reader. This book is based around the emotional connection of brothers, the departed, and girlfriend/boyfriends; without this aspect of the story, the plot felt empty and meaningless. Also, the author had to repeat using the words "he", "she", "him", and "her" very often, which became frustrating for me as a reader. I feel that the choice to use 3rd person point of view really took away from the story. Another choice that the author made was to tell the story (in 3rd person) by switching off every chapter and focusing on one of the three main characters. In my blog post for March I talked about the book Seedfolks and how the author's choice to focus on different characters ever chapter was a good fit for the theme. In this book, I feel that the decision to do this did not fit the story as it was supposed to show the connection between the three main characters not the separation. I would not recommend this book but would definitely recommend the movie.