“The Alienation of Courtney Hoffman” by Brady G. Stefani

• 12/11/2016
• no comments

THE ALIENATION OF COURTNEY HOFFMAN

Brady G. Stefani
SparkPress (2016)
ISBN 9781940716343
Reviewed by Evan Weldon (age 14) for Reader Views (12/16)

“The Alienation of Courtney Hoffman” by Brady G. Stefani is about 15-year-old Courtney Hoffman and her visions of aliens. When Courtney was 7 years old her crazy, alien obsessed, Grandfather tattooed a strange image of interlocked insects on her side and then tried to drown her in his bathtub. Eight years later Courtney is now being plagued with visions of aliens who visit her when she sleeps at night. And of course, nobody believes anything she says about aliens, especially not her mother. After another bout of alien visions, her mother decides she had enough and sends her to a mental institution. There Courtney meets Agatha who explains that her brother also has visions of aliens and that the extraterrestrials are very, very, real. Now that her Grandfather was proven right about the aliens, Courtney begins to explore the odd circumstances of his death as well as what the aliens want. Where will this journey take Courtney? Read and find out.

The main character, Courtney, doesn’t act her age, in fact, she spends a large part of the book pulling her hair and crying which is distracting from the plot of the story, but totally understandable for some of the things she went through in her life. I found most of the characters were childish and annoying, which made it hard to connect with them at times because I’m not used to that kind of behavior.

I found “The Alienation of Courtney Hoffman” by Brady G. Stefani hard to follow at points, but it may be that the writing style was just not for me. I would definitely recommend this book to people who enjoy science fiction. Some of the circumstances may not be very believable, but the take on aliens is very interesting and makes the book’s plot engaging.