The first line of the back cover copy for The Unnoticeables is, “There are angels, and they are not beneficent or loving.” This premise, along with the humour of the rest of the blurb, is what made me buy this book. The first line of the actual story is, “I met my guardian angel today. She shot me in the face.” I read this and thought, yup, I’m totally in.
TL;DR, spoiler-free review: an intriguing and well-executed premise, The Unnoticeables is funny, subversive, and unique. Great pacing that never really slows down, you’ll read this book fast because you won’t be able to do anything else until it’s finished.
You’re-verbose-and-I-like-it review: I was surprised how quickly this book got its hooks into me. Usually it takes a few chapters for me to say whether I’m interested enough to finish it, but from the first line I was committed. The characters were interesting and three dimensional, the plot was compelling and well-paced, and it was generally well-written, if a bit vulgar (I say that more as a disclaimer than a criticism. Vulgarity doesn’t bother me but there’s a lot of dick jokes and more than a few f-bombs so head’s up, in case that’s not your thing).
One of the best things about this book, other than the unique premise, is how much it subverts the reader’s expectations. Unlike The Invisible Library where I saw every twist coming with an overwrought twirl of the villain’s mustache, The Unnoticeables tells you what’s about to happen and then pulls the rug out from under you. For example, when the main character and his friends are about the engage in a high speed motorcycle chase, the severity and urgency of this moment is wholly ruined but the fact that he can’t actually operate the bike and they end up sort of chugging along after their target. This sort of bait-and-switch storytelling is so much more compelling to me than the paint-by-numbers style of writing.
To make matters even better, the book is funny. As in, I laughed out loud several times, funny. Robert Brockway uses this humour to subvert a lot of the seriousness of the novel but not in a way that gets annoying. You know how, in movies/TV, the characters are a little too funny, a little too witty? We all know no one talks like that in real life. Or how every situation is super serious… JOKE. Serious… JOKE. Over and over and over. This is not the case in The Unnoticeables. Brockway knows when to undercut the scene or dialogue with humour, but he also knows when not to; when to let the characters react the way you would expect them to, or when to let every gruesome, terrifying moment of a scene play out.
Random tangent: without giving any spoilers, one of the antagonists is very obviously based on an 90s heartthrob. I am embarrassed to admit how long it took me to realize exactly who it is but when I did, I almost cried laughing.
The best review I can give this book is to tell you that I was ordering the sequel before I finished the first one. This book is strange, intense, and hilarious and you should read it. 🙂