The Unfamous

  It's hard to pinpoint exactly how I found this 'book'. I actually read it online, on Wattpad; it is apparently going to become a published book soon and the author goes by 'Scotty Unfamous'. 'The Unfamous' is the story of Rio Greene, who starts her first year at Brompton University on a mission to reinvent herself and become 'unfamous'. The story follows the difficulties in Rio's past that make this mission hard to succeed in such as her cheating ex-boyfriend, Nathaniel Gibson, and her arch-nemesis, Georgia Daniels, the girl he cheated on her with. The plot is nothing new as the whole idea of a cheating boyfriend wanting to win back the 'love of his life'/ nerdy girl wanting to be popular and changing herself has been done before, but I was still quite excited to read it as I love teen dramas.

    My excitement quickly dimmed. First of all, 'unfamous' is not a word. So, the title actually makes no sense. In fact, I worry that Scotty might have meant to call the book 'The Infamous' but as the letters 'i' and 'u' are next to each other on a keyboard, the whole title could have been a typo that became too late to go back from. Awkward. Secondly, I am completely against colloquialisms/ references to brands in books unless they are used well or ironically. This is because they can make a novel  become outdated, ruining its longevity. For instance, The Unfamous was written in 2010 and  Rio constantly mentions how using a BlackBerry Curve makes her cool and 'part of them'. She also states that anyone without a BlackBerry is a loser as it is THE phone to have and BBM is better than everything. In 2013, the age of the iPhone, I was laughing whilst reading as it is now the opposite and the BlackBerry is now lame. In addition, every time a character wears a designer brand  of clothing, it is mentioned. This got irritating as well as I began to feel that I was reading an advert, not a book. Scotty Unfamous, you do not need to describe every item of clothing that a character is wearing! People read books in order to use their imagination and they are unable to do this if the author spells out everything for them as if they're stupid.

  Thirdly, there was just too much going on. To name a few, there is an abortion, teenage pregnancy, drug use and domestic abuse. There are too many characters in the book; they are not well developed and they're mostly annoying, awful people that ruin each others' lives. So, they all start to merge into one. In the second Unfamous book (yes, I read this as well as I am clearly a masochist), I think Scotty tried to remedy this by switching point of views as the book is written primarily in a first person narrative from Rio. Again, this was not successful and it was laughable as the audience is suddenly meant to believe that these colloquial youths have Shakespearean-esque and somewhat poetic inner voices and monologues. The reader gets a lot of Rio though and in my opinion, she is so hard to like as her 'love' for Nathaniel is incomprehensible and unbelievable as she jumps from one guy to the other.

  It is very obvious that I did not like 'The Unfamous'. The book's target audience is an urban generation and as it is getting a lot of love on Wattpad, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube (there's even a web series!), maybe I'm not 'black enough' to fully appreciate it. I say 'black enough' very bitterly but that is a post and rant for another day. Well done on all the success that you've had with it so far though, Scotty Unfamous.

Rating 1/5 *