by Ashly (link)
Genre het, romance
Pairings Isaac/OFC, Taylor/OFC, Zac/OFC
Length 40 chapters
Status Completed
Occasionally I go into these reviews completely blind, and that happens to be the case this time. My only initial impression is to roll my eyes at the use of a Hanson song lyric for the title; even though it’s done constantly, I find it cliche. Hopefully the story will not be.
Right away, Follow The Doorlight racks up several more strikes — it switches from first to third person and back again, there are tons of pointless characters (including a self insert), and the chapters are short and full of choppy, boring sentences. Despite not being from the earliest era of hanfic, it hits nearly all of the “don’ts” I would expect to see in something from the very beginning.
I think pointless is probably the best word for this story. I always try to keep my reviews as positive and constructive as possible, but the truth is, I can’t even keep track of which characters are which here. Of course there’s a girl for each Hanson, but I couldn’t tell you which of the dozen or so original characters is paired with which Hanson. I suppose it’s just as well that the plot never really goes anywhere or I would be really confused.
What little plot does eventually happen is mostly just scene after scene of wish fulfillment, shoehorning the narrator into Hanson’s first two years of fame. Ashly toys with tragedy at the end, but cuts the story off before much can be resolved or even happen. The last chapter is oddly well written compared to the rest of the story, but the Hanson lyrics thrown into the prose are too much for me. And with that, we’ve come full circle.
Review by Bethany (website)