Storygraph - Blog Posts

Onision's Book is an Abomination Against God

1/28/25

I have a burning desire to hold opinions on things that are none of my business. I also love unintentional comedy, I love stories that are so unaware of how bad they are, that they’re quite good. This blog post started as an experiment. The plan was to read the lowest-rated book in my library and then read the highest-rated book to see how they compare. The lowest-rated book in my library happens to be Stones to Abbigale by Onision, with an average of 1.87 stars on Goodreads, which is concerning. Goodreads tends to be very forgiving with reviews, if you can find anything below 3.50, you’re in for a wild ride. After reading this novel and compiling my notes, I realized that this novel is so grotesque, so insulting, that it deserves its own post entirely. 

Onision is a disgraced YouTuber who has been accused of s*xual ass*ult. Among the countless videos about him on YouTube, there are plenty that discuss his lackluster books. Curiosity ebbing in my heart, I bought a used copy on eBay and waited eagerly for the novel to arrive. I was worried I’d be biased while reading the book, being aware of how other people feel about it and Onision’s past, but oh boy, I didn’t think about Onision once while reading it. The book completely immersed me. Not because it was good, but because it was so terrible I couldn’t focus on anything else. 

This novel is 180 pages and normally I could knock that out in an evening, but I had to pause often to regain my composure and wait for the growing migraine to dull before diving back in. On BookTube it’s easy to find reviews of readers claiming to have found the worst book, but they’re all wrong. Stones to Abbigale is the worst novel. Ever. It contains immature, inauthentic, pretentious writing, filled to the brim with spelling errors, characters that make no sense, and senseless tragedies that are used to make the novel feel edgy and deep. 

This post contains spoilers, (trust me, please don’t read this book) and trigger warnings for s*xual ass*ult, school sh*otings, m*scarriages, ab*se, self-h*rm, s*icide, and death, though I talk about none of these things in detail.  

Stones to Abbigale follows James, a high school student who falls in love with his classmate, Abbi. There is no standard plot to the story; it’s less of a novel and more of a random series of events that happen to these two teens. 

The other characters include Ms. Robertson, Jason, Davis, James’s Mom, Seth, and Barack Obama. There are more characters but they don’t matter. 

Actually, none of the characters matter. In most novels, the author takes time for the reader to develop a connection to the characters, that way the reader will care about the story and continue to read it. In this novel, I was divorced from James and Abbi. There are scenes in this book where you should be worried about their safety and I felt nothing. There were even points where I was rooting for them to die, and these characters aren’t written to be unlikeable, they just are. Onision meant for the reader to sympathize with these characters. 

We’re chronically told how smart, funny, and kind-hearted James is, but we’re never shown that. James’s inner dialogue reads like an alien’s memoir and his two personality traits are being ‘observant’ and being obsessed with Abbi. As James parades through the story, everyone is chronically kissing his ass, including the president of the United States. 

Abbi doesn’t have a personality beyond having a cartoonishly tragic past and having the hots for James.

Ms. Robertson is the guidance counselor at the school and she does not behave like a human being. She’s framed as being a crazy religious Karen who has a personal beef with Abbi because Abbi was s*xually ass*ulted and when she didn’t want to keep the baby, Ms. Robertson lost her shit. Okay, that’s believable, there are tons of pro-life asshats out in the world, but Ms. Robertson loathes Abbi to the point it seems like she knows something about her that we don’t. This could've been an interesting subplot, but it was not handled well at all and came off as unbelievable. Ms. Robertson’s crimes against humanity include screaming at children in public, changing James’s class schedule so he can spend more time with Abbi, and framing innocent children for crimes they didn’t commit. 

Davis is James’s ‘best friend.’ I use that term loosely because as soon as James starts dating Abbi he seemingly forgets about Davis. But Davis does not forget about him. Davis is in love with James. This is unconfirmed, but Davis goes on and on about how much he loves his buddy! Platonically, of course! At one point, Davis becomes withdrawn when James starts dating Abbi and even asks James if he ever thinks about anyone else in a romantic way. This would be an interesting subplot but it is never explored and it is never confirmed that Davis has romantic feelings for James, though it is quite obvious. Davis seems to love James a little too much… Davis’s crimes against humanity include talking like a mentally ill eight-year-old and having no interests outside of James. 

James’s Mom is a cardboard cut-out who does whatever is convenient for James, which I’ll talk more about later. 

Seth is Abbi’s boyfriend, who she eventually leaves to be with James. Seth is ab*sive and cartoonishly evil. 

Jason switches back and forth from being a meathead bully who s*xually ass*ults classmates, to a brain-dead himbo. 

Barack Obama makes a brief appearance to congratulate James on being a good person. He is never referred to as Barack Obama, just ‘the President,’ but since this book was published in 2015, this officially means that Obama made an appearance in this story. He visits James’s school shortly after a sh*oting took place there and took the individual time to speak with every class. When visiting James’s class, he knows exactly who James is, because James is the main character. 

“James Patrick, the boy who nearly saved the day.” - Barack Obama

By the way, James did nothing during the sh*oting except roller skate through the school searching for Abbi. That was all he did. 

The authenticity and realism of this novel were a big reason why I couldn’t empathize with these characters. This book is written how Onision believes teenagers think, but the entire novel feels unrealistic and inauthentic. Nobody talks in a normal way, nobody thinks normally. This book felt like it was written by an alien who doesn’t understand human nuances or emotions. At one point there is a school sh*oting and the only observation that James has about the incident is that his classmates are staticistly higher to experience depression or s*icide. 

“[The survivors are] all now subjected to a heightened risk for depression and, statistically, even s*icide.” - James

The most egregious example of the characters behaving unrealistically is when James’s Mom invites Abbi to move in with them after her father is arrested and allows her teenage son and his girlfriend to sleep in the same bed and share the same room. Later on, James’s Mom gets remarried and moves in with her husband, leaving James and Abbi alone in the house to finish out the school year on their own with no adult supervision. 

The entire novel is filled with sentences that are empty and devoid of meaning, sentences that are meant to be deep and hard-hitting. This book is like a novelization of all the r/im14andthisisdeep posts. 

“Make up is just make up, skin is just skin, it is what it is.” - James

I can’t forgive this book for its sloppy, ham-fisted use of very serious issues. This book includes s*xual ass*ult, s*icide, self-h*rm, ab*se, a school sh*oting, and a m*scarriage, and absolutely none of those things added to the story. The school sh*oting is conducted by Seth shortly after Abbi breaks up with him, and it is an event that is used as a dramatic garnish right in the middle of the story and none of the main characters die or get hurt, so it doesn’t matter. The other terrible events are just a randomized list of occurrences that Abbi experienced in the past, horrible things that she often laments about so James can fix her. Words can’t describe how angry I was when it was revealed that Abbi was SA’d. 

This book has nothing to say about any of these serious issues. It is ill-prepared for it, and it doesn’t even try. To lazily shoot out incidents that have nothing to do with the story so that the writer can feel deep and smart is something that I cannot take. How dare this writer use such a terrible thing as a random occurrence to make us feel bad for these unlikable childish characters. I’m not against any of these topics being written about, but when you, as a writer, introduce them into your novel, you have a responsibility to the people who suffered through these things to write about it seriously and realistically and not treat it as a joke. Onision should’ve just written “fuck SA survivors,” on his online forum and left it at that. Instead, we get this shit. 

This entire novel reeks of arrogance. This novel has so many spelling errors. If I’m to believe what Amazon tells me, Onision’s partner, Kai, edited this novel, and boy, did they do a bad job. The writing style is borderline unreadable. There were so many spelling errors and the language was stilted. Just one pass through a spell check system is all it would take. Onision has fans who offered to edit it for free, and he refused. Why? Because he’s arrogant. He believes the novel doesn’t need a second or third draft, he believes it’s fine the way it is and if we can’t see that, then we just can’t appreciate true art! 

James is a self-insert character for Onision. It is obvious through the way everyone treats James and his heavy plot armor, not to mention the fact that Onision’s real name is Gregory James Daniel. In the description of the book, Onision writes, “James is essentially a better version of myself. His home, his school & his life all resemble my own at his age. The people James analyzes and is surrounded by are not so unlike those I’ve known as well. I have experienced much of the loss James has however his happier moments are more often than not also mine. I want to share my story without it being purely non-fiction.”

I hope that droning, moronic sentence gives you a glimpse into what it was like to read this book. By the way, any spelling errors you see in the quotes are Onision’s and his alone. 

If this is a fictionalized retelling of actual events, then what parts of this are real, then? If this novel was a way for Onision to tell his story without the confines of reality, then what percentage of this actually happened? Did Onision meet Obama? Are they still bros? Did Onision’s mother give him an apartment when he was a junior in high school? Did Onision survive a school sh*oting? From what I can find, Gregory James Daniel or James Jackson, has never survived a school sh*oting. What about this novel was real? What parts of this novel actually happened? None. None of this happened. Onision romanticized his childhood and added some random bullshit drama and violence to juice it up. The end. 

On top of everything else, this book has the audacity to be pretentious. Some people can do pretention well, like Quentin Tarantino, or Christopher Nolan. Gregory James Daniel has not earned the right to be pretentious. If you’re going to be pretentious, at least give me a good story, but Onision can’t do that because he’s too arrogant to accept feedback or criticism. 

The only saving grace of this story is that it can be funny sometimes. Not funny in the way it was intended, but funny nonetheless. Around 2/3 into the story, James, Abbi, and Davis are driving and witness a man jump off an overpass. Davis rushes out of the car, which is still moving, by the way, and attempts to help the man, who is clearly dead, and gets hit by a car and fucking dies. This all happens within two pages, and I laughed so hard I had tears in my eyes. It was so unexpected, completely out of left field, and so fucking stupid. 

So after this, we get a chapter of James blaming himself, even though he didn’t do anything, Davis’s mom praising James for being a good friend, and James pushing the pain away by smashing his girlfriend. 

“[Abbi] was all I had left.” - James 

Yeah, fuck your mom and your sister, I guess. 

So, how does the story end? Someone blows up the school. That’s it. The school is blown up and the last line of the story is, “Well, I guess I won’t be running for [class] president.” 

Whoa… what a story. I bought this book on eBay for five dollars, but if I had paid full price, it would’ve been ten. Ten dollars. That was how much I made per hour at my last job. That means that one hour of labor is equal to this torture nexus. God fucking damn it…

If you’re curious about the details of this book, watch one of the countless YouTube videos made about it instead of reading it. I recommend the one by @strange-aeons, which was how I found out about this goddamn monstrosity in the first place. 

I gave this story 1 star on Goodreads and 0 stars on Storygraph because Storygraph is a superior app. When looking at other reviews on Goodreads and Storygraph, it seems all the positive reviews are either people trying to give Onision the benefit of the doubt or people who are being sarcastic. 

Overall, this book is similar to The Perks of Being a Wallflower if it was co-written by a fourteen-year-old and a mentally ill incel and published on Temu. 

Final grade: BAD

Rick Stepp (irresponsibleink@gmail.com)

Review: Ruin and Rising

I enjoyed it more than the previews two books. I actually laughed and cried too. The end („After“) was the best part, it’s a shame it was so short. The whole story is 99.9% just suffering, grief, horror, more suffering, pain, frustration, hopelessness for happiness. It was refreshing to read something soft in the end, but I feel like if the books would have a little more of it in between the story we would feel the horrors and grief even more. You know, balance and stuff. (Yes, I am here to ask you to break my heart, I know)

I definitely wanted more diversity in characters, but it had a little bit of queer characters and I enjoyed it. I thought there would be more.. I was really waiting T.T but it’s a 2014 book so I think it did pretty well for its time?

It’s hard to write a review without spoilers, but I honestly did not enjoy Mal :) because what the hell dude, I get the whole complicated situation started from the second book but what was wrong the whole time before it? Also, I did not understand if he actually did other girls or not, Zoya said it in a way that actually sounded like he didn’t, I don’t understand (sorry, I am an autistic and I read as an autistic). Because if he did, why the hell? And if he didn’t, also, why the hell? Anyways, check out the trigger warnings and go read the trilogy.

I hope to find more time to read soon, but I am so busy with doing things and having anxiety T.T I finally came around to film a YouTube video about the books I read in the last 11 months, but editing it will be so annoying because I don’t have money for a program that would put proper subtitles in..

Review: Anarchism: Arguments for and Against (by Albert Meltzer)

Very tiny book, less than 100 pages. But quite easy to understand for someone who reads stuff in english besides social media content. I did not know some words and there are definitely some things I need to do research on because I did not complitely understood how smth is ment. But it’s a book full of short answers, which in itself is a great concept. If someone needs/wants to dive deeper they can, but if they don’t want/cannot afford it atm they will have some closer to reality picture of anarchism and how a lot of things that are called anarchism actually are none. I am planing to read some things by Black authors on topic of abolition, but this was definitely helpful to find some ground from which I can move forward.

The book is older and it has no mention of genderqueer people (though it has mention of what’s usually called sexual minorities). I did not see anything about Disability as well.

In the Summer 2023 I started my jurney of ✨re-wiring my brain ✨ to learn again how to read, how to draw, how to write. How to LET MYSELF do those things. I had a huge blockage in my head for many years due to reasons. You know, trauma alters brains. Also, when you work through Traumata or masking or similar, you might “delete” some connections which leads to #skillregression. Skill regression is a real thing, look it up. And we can sometimes alter it as well by re-learning, by creating new connection. Also, learn something that was “lost” to skill regression. I wish people would research it more, it actually could help so many folx to be able to do things without suffering or do things in general.

So, anyways, since summer 2023 I have been trying to teach myself to read again. I could only read scientific stuff and stuff for my uni (not always, but sometimes) and never finish anything, it was super duber hard labour, my anxiety was yelling and I was trying to concentrate on words in a text while being screamed at by different parts of my brain the whole time. Very tiring. But yeah, it worked, I can sit down and read when the brain fog is not very strong and on some days I can read the whole book in one sitting. Or two books, depending on the size.

So, I just wanted to say, that since then (summer 2023) untill now (March 2025) I have read 38 books of different nature. Sure, some people read 52-60 books a year, but I am not some people. I have issues :) and my Disability is disabiliting 24/7, sometimes more sometimes less. So, I am super proud of myself. I did not believe that it was possible, but it worked. And there is a loooong way to go to learn doing other mostly fun things without feeling like I actually went through an underground passage where everyone is crying, screaming and yelling in fear and despair. That’s how reading felt like 2023 and beginning oh 2024..

(In the last pictures are not the books i‘ve read but I did finished most of them)

Review: Siege and Storm (Leigh Bardugo)

Very intense in my opinion. A lot of new characters, drama, you can feel how lonely and tired the main characters are, it’s great written. Also with more funny sentences because they break the intense atmosphere easier. You know, because the story is SO intense. More diverse Charakters, but I misunderstood some reviews about queer folx being in the story I guess… I have some guesses but I feel like I see queer Charakters just because I want them to be queer, not because they might be. Looking forward for the third book of the trilogy, but will read something else first because yeah. Intense.

Review: L‘Étranger (Albert Camus)

Too bad I could not read it in French. I wish I could.

I really liked HOW it was written. The first half of the story is just cis men being cis men in a nutshell (ignoring, supporting each others in the violence they do, pretending like nothing happens, even helping each other while being like oh yeah he is a good guy you know). The other half is more philosophical. It hit differently also because I had an Ex who was pretty much like the main character: not interested in anything (except YouTube videos), not having opinions, not experiencing emotions very much (not expressing them is one thing but feeling bored by literally everything is different), not being able to have deep connections and be vulnerable with himself or others. On the other hand, the main character is wildly autistic coded for his inability to cope with physical stimuli (I feel that a lot) and remembering things others would not remember while reacting „inappropriately“ to stuff. So I don’t think I liked the story, but it’s on me. I liked how it is written though, Italien watching a film, so many details but it’s not too much. It’s like a strange diary of someone, who does not need people and actually doesn’t mind to die because people are too boring and everything is useles anyway. Something like that. But I would need to read some interpretations for sure, especially since I have bel reading in German.

Tiny book review. Shadow And Bone (Leigh Bardugo).

Finished Shadow And Bone in one day. Ordered the rest of the trilogy + first Six Of Crows secondhand. Netflix defenetly spoiled me, but there was also a good thing about watching part of the story before reading it. I could imagine the characters more diverse than they were described in the book. I am a little confused about why there were almost no describtion about the way people looked. It would be such a cool thing to imagine the different cultural clothes, what the different ethnicities looked like ect.. I mean sure, I can imagine for myself how someone from the Shu Han place would look like (I personally think about the Tatar-Mongols because of their closeness to Zar Rus) but it would be great to see more details of their special things like acessories, ways to sit, gestures, foods, anything. In Shadow And Bone we know nothing about the Fjerdians Alina met except of all of them having beards xD and we know literally nothing about the third nation (there were Ravkans (Rus based), Fjerdians (Nordic folx), Shu Han (mongol based) and the other one which sounded German or Dutch but had no describtion whatsoever so I did not even remember their name)… that’s a shame. But I hope more will come in the next books. In addition to that it was a little confusing for me as someone who speaks Russian to see the choice of words for some things. And sure, they don’t SPEAK Russian, but it’s still strange to see an infinitive verb used as a subject, it just takes away something serious from the dialogue for me… but I guess it’s a me-thing, because folx who don’t speak Russian probably enjoyed every minutes of it (and I am very happy for them!)

I do admit, that the book inspired me to pick up the worldbuilding process after I am finished with my last theater science paper.

https://app.thestorygraph.com/profile/elfi_reads

My storygraph Account✨ it’s created by a Black cis woman (hope it’s true) and should be better than good reads. I really enjoy that people can submit trigger warnings and also upload their books themselves.

Just started Shadow And Bone. I watched some of it via Netflix adaptation, but once I have found out that there is a book I did not want to finish watching. Also, I remember very little if the story, so I almost get to know the characters for the first time.

Finally reading the secret history... and I have thoughts 🧠✒️🐇🗡️

(Nobody mentions Bunny eating other people's food. Does it make me weird that that's the point I really started to dislike him. )