Official Review: Gather Sticks Along the Way

[thegiltyone]

[Following is the official OnlineBookClub.org review of "Gather Sticks Along the Way" by G Tyler Mills.]

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This is a story about a man named Charles, a pastor, and of Leonard, a minimum wage worker. Their lives intertwine through Charles’ son Chuck. This is what I would consider fiction, and a little bit of mystery/suspense.

So the story begins with Charles, waking up to an alarm clock he hates. The first chapter is short, detailing Charles’ morning, daily run. It did a good job of explaining who Charles was, but I got very little other information from the chapter, and it didn’t seem a particularly strong starting point.

The second chapter is a flashback; but that’s not clear until a few paragraphs in. I reread it a few times to make sure I was keeping up with the story. It would have helped if the chapters had been given headings, like for this one it could give a date in the past. Anyway, this chapter details how an object came to be in Charles’ desk at work, and is a rather long, roundabout way of explaining how it got there. The final sentence spookily says that it will be years before the object in his desk is brought back out.

This book alternates between Leonard’s point of view and Charles’ point of view. This is a good way to tell the story, but since the chapters were unlabeled and it would sometimes take paragraphs before I learned who was being described I was confused often. This could easily have been fixed with the name of the character whose point of view the chapter is at the beginning. A few of the chapters seemed extraneous; they didn’t contribute much (if anything) to the story and distracted me from what was really going on. It was good to be introduced to Chuck, who is Charles’ son, but much of the storyline was unnecessary.

I do enjoy learning that items will be later called upon, but it is done repeatedly in this story. I say pick one item and detail its background. Other items can get a paragraph or two, but not whole chapters. I lost some of the storyline. Another part of this story is there is nearly no dialogue, especially in the first half. This makes the story move slowly along and I don’t get the character development I need to connect with Charles. He even barely speaks to his wife, Ann.

One chapter is all about Charles building for his son Chuck a tree house. I think it was meant to explain the bond between the father and son, but I read it as detached, since there was (again) little to no dialogue. I missed out on falling in love with a little boy and developing an emotional relationship toward him, and instead of making what happens to him later in the book more tragic, I didn’t find myself really caring what happened to a boy I didn’t know.

The change in Charles’ character was unbelievable at best. He was quiet and I didn’t ever really get to know who he was, so I didn’t know how to feel when he met Leonard. The ending was confusing and I didn’t understand how – or why – Leonard was even involved. If Charles had used logic, then this wouldn’t have happened. It seemed like too many coincidences, and no amount of God can make them seem real.

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