Romeo and/or Juliet: A Choosable-Path Adventure
As I was wondering through Barnes & Nobles trying to pass some time, I stopped and saw the title of this book and thought…how do they accomplish such a thing? I read the back and heard that some of the adventures take the two on ninja quests, or turn them into pirates, so between that awesomeness and my love of choose your path adventures I HAD to pick it up and find out what it was about.
For a good review, I figured I should at least read one full adventure as each character. I won’t lie, it was a slow start and I believe that is because I chose a different path than the original Romeo and Juliet (main storyline choices marked by hearts through book) rather quickly. I came to quick endings a few times and actually got a little frustrated. I figured out that if you stay with the real storyline for a little longer and then choose different paths, they are much more interesting. At the point where I was given a side quest as Juliet’s nurse where I had to actually crack a number puzzle to get across town to deliver a message to Romeo, I was hooked. Overall I have to say this was an interesting book and I can see it not being for many people. I quite enjoyed it. Below are a list of things that I either liked, or didn’t like, about the book and some things others might find that would turn them off of the book:
• The way the book is written is in a teenager’s slang. Like totally funny and part of the satire. I took it for the humorous style it was, but others might hate reading stories in this style.
• I highly advocate that people who pick up this book have read Shakespeare’s original Romeo and Juliet. There is a lot of tongue-in-cheek humor in this book that plays off the original (discussions of biting thumbs at each other etc.). It would have been very confusing and frustrating to not understand those jokes had I not gotten the references.
• The OCD person that lives inside of me had a really hard time flipping through the pages and seeing endings for different choices and not knowing what those storylines were. I wanted to see where all the paths lead, but there are over 100 different story lines and I didn’t love this book enough to try and catch ‘em all.
This book was something I’m glad I grabbed off the shelves because it was so interesting and different. Unless you are obsessed with choose your own path adventure books, or a die hard fan of all things Romeo and Juliet, I would say this was too quick of a read to want to own the book. If you’re curious, maybe pick it up from your local library or borrow it from a friend who happens to have such an odd book on their shelves.
Malia's Pizza Rating
Homemade pizza. A choose your own toppings adventure.