Book Review: Blaze by Laurie Boyle Crompton

 Book: Blaze or Love in the time of       supervillains.
 Author: Laurie Boyle Crompton
 File Type: Ebook
 Release Date: February 1st 2013
 Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
   

synopsis:  

Blaze is tired of spending her life on the sidelines, drawing comics and feeling invisible. She's desperate for soccer star Mark to notice her. And when her BFF texts Mark a photo of Blaze in sexy lingerie, it definitely gets his attention. After a hot date in the back of her minivan, Blaze is flying high, but suddenly Mark's feelings seem to have been blasted by a freeze-ray gun, and he dumps her. Blaze                     gets her revenge by posting a comic strip featuring uber-villain Mark the Shark. Mark then retaliates by posting her "sext" photo, and, overnight, Blaze goes from Super Virgin Girl to Super Slut. That life on the sidelines is looking pretty good right about now...

Blaze was a fairly okay book.

There were some really great elements to it and some that entirely let the whole book down.
There were superheroes , comic strips , pink kool-aid hair and pent up girl rant.
This is Blaze's story. An eighteen year old , almost outsider lover of the comic book world. 
Blaze has always liked Mark. Mark is the typical popular jock who coincidentally coaches her thirteen year old brother's soccer team. After she finally catches Mark's attention , she thinks that this is definitely the best thing that could ever happen to her. What happens next involves a picture of her in some sexy lingerie being sent to the jock , a hot date in the back of her van and obviously...a pitiful dumping. And that's when Blaze decides to take revenge and makes a whole new comic strip featuring Mark as the evil man which only instigates that asshat of a jock to put her sexy-undy-picture on the internet. Well bloody poop.

All of the above is something we know right from the beginning. We know that there is going to be a girl obsessively infatuated with a guy and we also know that after a lovely date she is to be dumped. We also know that she takes her revenge and we also know that the guy retaliates. What we don't know is what follows after that and let me tell you, it doesn't appear until the last 70 pages. 

Blaze could have been a really badass female protagonist but failed to deliver herself. I only saw her as a girl with some serious issues regarding her self respect and self confidence. Many would say that this book is about her finally growing up and reaching the heights of maturity but I'm not sure I see how I'm going to understand her so called 'growth' if I don't get the whole point of it. What I'm trying to say is that Blaze went through situations many teens go through as well, but it's really hard to empathize with her because she's so damn stupid.
No way in hell could a person so independent (as described in the book) could fail to see how stupid her whole thought process actually is.

Also I don't think I like how everything finally panned out. I have to say , the concept was pretty great and did hold lots of potential but the final product did fail on many standards.
But like I said, there were great elements to it too.

For one, there were characters I totally adored. I loved Blaze's thirteen year old brother Josh and his group of friends who Blaze lovingly called the 'soccer cretins'. I loved how considerate and amazing he was. The idea of incorporating comic panels was seriously awesome but I would have liked it more if there were more of those. I feel the last 70 pages really redeemed the whole book and helped the book not become a total epic fail.

Laurie Boyle Crompton's writing has a lot of potential and I can actually see myself reading several other books by her.