by Edith Campbell (link)
Genre het, romance
Pairings Isaac/OFC, Taylor/OFC, Zac/OFC
Length 13 chapters
Status Completed
There are any number of tropes one can point to as exemplary of Middle of Nowhere era fics. They became tropes because people liked them, and also because they were done so many times. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with that; people wouldn’t continue to write these things if they weren’t well received. Unfortunately, a story that contains nearly every one of the most common tropes is like the straw that broke the camel’s back.
That’s the problem with 77th Street. Most of it does, as the title suggests, take place on that street and deal with the teenage romances that, like the song says, happen on said street. It’s a cute concept, and I do appreciate what Edith was trying to do, but her writing doesn’t have anywhere near the strength to support any over-arching themes like that, and the story ends up just being another light, virtually plot-less romance.
By the end, none of the boys relationships seem too set in stone, even though all of them but Zac have been through several. None of the female characters are well developed, but for that matter, neither are any of the Hansons. A story this light on, well, everything is the most harmless of unpleasant reads, really. 77th Street isn’t helped by Edith’s poorly edited writing and tendency to label the point of view mid-scene even though the third person narration hardly changes at all. In the end, though, it is a harmless story that at the least does provide a good example of what hanfic was all about in those early days.
Review by Bethany (website)