Blood on the Handle by R.A. Montgomery
My rating: 1 of 5 stars
In this book, my parents have vanished mysteriously on a sailing trip, and I now live with my uncle in his New Orleans mansion. My uncle calls his mansion “Swan Song,” which tells you how rich he is. Poor people name their houses, but they don’t name them things like “Swan Song.” For example, I call my place “Over by where they found that dead lady in a trunk” (This really happened. I am the 99%).
Anyway, the story starts off when I get dropped off by the school bus and have to walk the mile-long driveway up to Swan Song. Which makes me really angry right away. I have this super rich uncle, and nobody on his staff can pick me up from school? I have to walk up a road like a commoner? What the hell kind of rich kid walks? This is my chance to live a fantasy, rich lifestyle, and here I am using LEGS to get around.
When I get to the house, I find a bloody dagger in the floor! Then I look out the window and see some people packing my uncle into a car, and I run out, jump on my motorcycle (which my uncle gave me) and give chase.
From here, I make exactly four unimportant choices before I die, burned alive or possibly shot in a hayloft. It’s unclear.
I wanted to skip to the end here because I’m still pissed off that I had to ride the damn bus and no one picked me up, and all along I had a goddamn motorcycle? Did the person who wrote the endings to this story read the beginning? What was I even doing on the bus? I was the Screech, riding the bus like a geek, when I could have been the A.C. Slater showing up to school on a Harley.
This reads like one of those stories you write in class where one person writes a line, then it’s passed to a second person who writes a line, and then a third person who can only read the line written just before his.
Also, I’m 90% certain I would have manifested magic powers if I’d made it a little further. Weird magic weapon? My parents are dead? This is pretty much a guarantee that I’m going to do some ala-kazaam before long.