Heather Couch's "Reciprocal"

Title: First Draft

Reciprocal by Heather Couch

Reviewed by S. Davis

November 27, 2015

9:30 p.m.

Reciprocal by Heather Couch is a young adult novel about a high school student, Alicia, and the whirlwind she is thrown into when an alien race, Peregrinus, crash lands into her hometown. She falls in love with Stephen, a member of the Peregrinus, just when a war breaks out amongst the humans and the aliens. Reciprocal is a typical modern science-fiction novel set in an alternate universe that has become so popular within the last decade.

The idea for the novel is original and promising. However, the version of the novel I read was not worthy of anything but a first draft. There were multiple grammatical mistakes, words missing, and run-on sentences. The author also pulled definitions in the foreword of the novel from Wikipedia, which is extremely unprofessional. The novel was not yet ready to be published by any means.

There were also a lot of events happening within the novel that made it hard for the reader to distinguish what was happening, when, and to which characters. Too many overarching themes were crammed into one novel that made the content seem more cliché than clever. There was no linear plot that the reader could follow because the novel jumped around from one event, character, or timeframe without warning. The characters themselves were tremendously inconsistent as if they were not yet fully developed by Couch. The author also does a lot of “telling” rather than “showing;” she takes the time to explain every little detail rather than letting the actions of the characters explain itself.  

Once again, Couch has a really good start for a novel, but the action needs to be spread over multiple books so that the reader doesn’t feel rushed while reading. Couch also needs to go back and line-edit every sentence she wrote in the book and try publishing again.

This version of Reciprocal was a good first draft of the novel, but it definitely needs to be worked with more in order to be taken seriously.

I give Reciprocal 1 out of 5 stars.

Until next time,

S. Davis