⭐⭐⭐
⭐⭐⭐. 5 /5 Stars.
The Bad Weather Friend By Dean Koontz
The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
I hoped to be gripped, perhaps even boxed in.
At the beginning of the story I wasn't sure how I would feel. It took a while to be swayed by Benjamin and the other characters, although the visualization was there. As were my moments of curiosity.
Still, I found myself taken away from the book many times by speech that made less of some characters, a story that took more than it gave, and confliction with character portrayals. For example, I found some happenings and people awkwardly described. To the point that it felt Koontz may have been telling the audience about things he didn't know very well or decided to randomly add to the story hoping for a different result. There was also a point that I felt Benjamin's lifestyle and his supposed level of maturity were sewing discord with his more childish words and behavior at different times in the story. Wherein I'd easily forgotten he was a 23 year old man given the near constant emphasis on his lack of anger, success in retail to the point of living wealthy within 3 years, etc. These felt wildly different and almost unrealistic to me (normally it is easily forgiven and forgotten as this is a work of fiction) in a way that was just too much opposition to the realism of its settings, characters and positions they are wrapped up in for a large portion of the book. These did not disappear but, when I settled back into reading it a number of attempts later, I had a slightly better experience.
While other things were left to be desired and the references were a bit too abundant for my tastes, I enjoyed some of the brief comedic moments. More specifically, there were nice one-liners and jabs most of us {readers} could chuckle at. My favorite aspects of this story were the little winks to a character being more than they appeared--which could be said to some degree for much of the supporting characters--and the messages about friendship and life sprinkled throughout it. For me, this book really 'came alive' within the chapter called "The Monster" and leveled out into a semi-intriguing story for some time thereafter.
Unfortunately, I did not feel the story in its entirety was as enjoyable as certain moments throughout it. I had hoped to be gripped, perhaps even boxed in like the mysterious package to Mr. Benjamin Catspaw's doorstep. I did, however, leave the work with some memorable quotes. I've provided two of them below.
Two impactful quotes:
"Many of your friends will be fair-weather friends, Benjamin, but I will be there in bad weather, in worse weather, in any weather."
"The world desperately needs nice, sane people."