I learned a lot from reading this book but most of my new knowledge gained boils down to two things; the first is that Fracking is about a lot more than pumping stuff into the ground. A lot more. The second thing I learned is that Jelsnik is an awful lot better at writing blurbs than books. That’s a bold statement, I know. But let me get into it.

I am not going to trash this book. It wasn’t bad or worthy of that kind of review. It was an OK book, one that I probably would not have picked up on my own but still somewhat enjoyed nonetheless. This is the kind of book that is targeted. If you are not interested in political affairs, environmental debates, or fracking in general, then you probably won’t appreciate this book for what it’s truly worth.

So just what is this book about?

God, an awful lot. There are at least five main characters who are each vastly different from the next. Jelsnik does a great job tying their stories in with one another but I felt like, for the sake of such a detailed and potentially stale message, there was too much taking away from the main point. I think my biggest issue with the book was the style of writing. Please don’t misunderstand me, the writing itself was not bad, it just wasn’t my style. There were a lot of words that didn’t fit the story. They weren’t ‘big’ words but they stood out and felt awkward. At times it felt like Jelsnik wrote this with a thesaurus in her hand. The extra words just didn’t blend with the rest of the writing or the story, they became distracting and made it hard for me to get through some of the pages. I just kept wondering, why would you use that word?

The most difficult part was actually the opening of the story. The sentences were too long, the details too choppy, and there were too many random words that could have been replaced with simpler vocabulary that wouldn’t have ‘dumbed down’ the writing but made the book more appealing. I don’t think the book should have been ‘dumbed down’ at all, first of all, it wasn’t written at such a high level that you needed a PhD to understand every other paragraph. But it gave you that feeling of, why not keep it simple? The topic of fracking was dry enough, it felt counterproductive to toss in a final blow of staleness with all the extra SAT words.

That being said. I would still insist others give this book a fair chance. This is only my opinion and it does not reflect the author’s true talent. I think it takes a lot of passion to tackle a book focused on fracking so I give my compliments to Jelsnik for wanting to raise awareness in such a creative manner.  

*I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review*