Official Review: Mad Days of Me: Escaping Barcelona

[mishy]

[Following is the official OnlineBookClub.org review of "Mad Days of Me: Escaping Barcelona" by Henry Martin.]

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Mad Days of Me: Escaping Barcelona by Henry Martin, is a fictional short story (130 pages) and is Book One and would seem to be the first Book of a series. This story is about a young man named Rudy who, not wanting to conform to the norms and tedium of his European home town, leaves to pursue the life he wants. Despite the language barriers and being unfamiliar with the destinations, he is happy and hopeful that he can make a new life for himself somewhere along his travels. He travels to several towns in Europe and it is on going to his next destination that he decides to go to Barcelona on a whim.

He gets stuck in Barcelona with no way to leave and encounters extremely difficult times. He lives in hopelessness and is filled with great desperation in his failed attempts to leave Barcelona once and for all. A place he found so magical in the beginning has become his prison. Even though he has several horrible experiences he also has good ones that give him hope to go on and hope in leaving Barcelona.

I found the story to be slow-paced and at such a stand-still sometimes, that I had to put down the book. It was hard to see the story progression because of what seemed to me, to be unnecessary inner ramblings that went on too long and were repetitive. The general plot of the story is good but the delivery style left much to be desired. There were also grammatical errors that made an already difficult read for me, more so.

Though the delivery style of this story did not appeal to me, the plot is good so others may find it to their liking. I however did not like the delivery style and would not personally recommend this book and only finished it because I like the general plot and was willing to read through the flatness to get to the relevant parts. A lot of the monotony could have been replaced with more background information on the main character and expound on why he wanted to leave his home. Even though this might be revealed in later works in the series, in my opinion the reader could have been given more insight to connect to the main character, as the lack of information made it hard to connect with Rudy.

I would give this book two out of four stars. With improvements in delivery, this could have been a good book.

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[henrymartin]

Mishy,

I'm sorry you were not able to connect to the story the way it was intended. Sometimes it is a problem of genre, other times personal tastes or the writing itself. As the author, I wanted to express my sincere gratitude for your honest opinion nonetheless.
The only thing I'd like to mention is that Escaping Barcelona is not a short story; it is actually 75k words, or 220 pages.

Again, thank you for sharing your honest opinion.

Henry

[mishy]

You are welcome and I would like to read the book that follows Escaping Barcelona. I can understand that every writer has a unique style.

[henrymartin]

Check you PM.