Transparent Review

TITLE Transparent
AUTHOR Natalie Whipple
PUBLICATION May 21st 2013 by HarperTeen
READ April 09 to 10, 2013
SOURCE HarperTeen via Edelweiss for review

Plenty of teenagers feel invisible. Fiona McClean actually is.

An invisible girl is a priceless weapon. Fiona’s own father has been forcing her to do his dirty work for years—everything from spying on people to stealing cars to breaking into bank vaults.

After sixteen years, Fiona’s had enough. She and her mother flee to a small town, and for the first time in her life, Fiona feels like a normal life is within reach. But Fiona’s father isn’t giving up that easily.

Of course, he should know better than anyone: never underestimate an invisible girl.

Oy. Looking back I may remember reading TRANSPARENT as one of the most unpleasant reading experiences I have had. Ringing in at only 231 pages on my Kindle I was hesitant to DNF because it was such a short read but those 231 page took forevvvvver. This book lost me so early on because it failed to make me give a damn about anyone or anything that happened in the story. I mean it’s the story of an invisible girl on the run from her father. I repeat: It’s the story. Of an INVISIBLE girl. On the run from her father. Forgive me for not worrying about her safety.


In the dystopian world of TRANSPARENT people are born... different. There are some that are born with purple or green skin and some that are born with super powers. We see telekinetic’s, strong men, and people with x-ray vision. All of this came to be because of a pill that was widely distributed during the Cold War to protect people from the effects of radiation, well that didn’t go well and it forever changed the gene pool. Fiona is the only person who was ever born invisible, she is our MC and I hate her. This girl seriously had nothing going for her that made me empathize with her in the slightest. She was impulsive, thick headed and annoying. I think that these attributes were supposed to make her come across as strong and independent to the reader but they were so over the top that they just made me want to punch her. Essentially anything that happened to her in this novel was due to her stupidity and inability to listen to the people around her. It’s one thing to be smart and independent, it’s another to be dumb.

There were hints at a love triangle for much of the book but that ironed itself out pretty smoothly which was a relief but I didn’t care much for Brady or Seth. Much of their life is kept such a mystery that I didn’t get to connect with why they were the way they were until very late in the book. Even the details that we do get are sketchy at best when it comes to their father. Sketchiness seems to be a theme in this book because even the details surrounding the state of the world are not fully developed which left me longing for some solid world building. We know that there are syndicates running different parts of the US, and China is mentioned in passing near the end but I didn’t have a sense of how the world was at all and to be a strong dystopian these days there needs to be some good world building.

My final complaint about this book is that some of the actions were just so weird. Like when Fiona befriends Bea and they get onto the topic of whether or not her spit is invisible. Well to test this out Bea makes Fiona spit on her in the car, yes you read that right, she talks Fiona into spitting on her. She then touches the spit and comments on its goopiness and then book goes on, that’s so ridiculous! I don’t care if spit is invisible! Fiona is invisible and she is still a tangible human being therefore her spit is spit! Also, when Fiona is staying away from her house because she thinks there is a chance that her father has found out about where her and her mother are she deems it important enough to go home and grab a bathing suit so that she can go swimming. I mean come on, if you are going to put a character in a dire situation for some reason, at least make it a good one.

There was so much to this story that was worthy of eyerolls and not enough to make me give a damn so I don’t have anything good to say about it. It’s definitely a novel that fell flat for me and one that I won’t be remembering (for any good reasons) in the future. Skip this one folks.