Chad Pelley, best known as the enthusiast behind the East Coast–based CanLit booster blog Salty Ink, has returned with his second novel. While Salty Ink offers a spirited (if somewhat sycophantic) take on our nation’s literature, Pelley’s new book contributes little to it.

The plot is easy to follow but hard to care about: Cohen Davies finds himself in prison as the result of a series of events involving his ex-lover, Allie. We meet a host of characters straight out of central casting, the worst being Allie herself. Pelley gives her exaggerated gestures to show how sexy Cohen finds her, and the couple’s courtship is downright cringe-worthy. (In one scene they sit on a roof staring at the stars, despite the fact that it’s raining.) 

Pelley should be commended for the detailed research that clearly went into this novel: his portraits of prison life and of Cohen’s job as a scientist are very well done. But the story itself moves through a series of pointless twists and tropes: there’s a drowned brother (an increasingly overdone occurrence in CanLit); parents dying of cancer; an infidelity involving Allie and her boss; and a young boy Cohen wants to adopt. The issue here isn’t just these convolutions. Nor is it the novel’s clunky prose, wooden dialogue, or tortured similes. An insidious sentimentality infects the entire novel, culminating with a final scene in a cemetery that will have readers throwing the book across the room.

In sum, Every Little Thing is just a series of plot points with no broader meaning, no catharsis to hold it all together. By the end, we are left with little more than the knowledge that Cohen’s temper sure gets him into trouble after his girl leaves him for another man.