Anonymous puts things under scrutiny with ‘Chameleon on a Kaleidoscope’

Chelsea Santos

The second installment in the Oxygen Thief series falls short of expectations. Good thing Anonymous is, well, anonymous.

Update: My Barnes and Noble order arrived in the mail, containing the next installment in the Oxygen Thief series. After recounting the downward spiral of falling in love with the female version of his former self in Diary of an Oxygen Thief, which I reviewed here.

In the sequel to the hit bestseller, Anonymous returns to pick up where he left off—more specifically, picking up the pieces of his broken heart. Still in New York City, he struggles to cope with his multiple traumas and documents his blatant objectification of every woman he manages to sleep with (because all he wants in his middle age is sex) in the span of a hundred-something error-laden, 14-point font typed pages, devoid of commas in certain spans.

Not only does Anonymous need a therapist (he goes from disturbed alcoholic to disturbed sex addict), he also needs a proofreader.

Chameleon on a Kaleidoscope has no plot line at all; it’s more of an extended annotated bibliography on every one of his female conquests, from the sexual experiences to the flaws he finds in his partners. You don’t ever know what happens to the only other important character in the novel, his girlfriend; she disappears within the first 40 pages or so.

And if you think it couldn’t get worse from there, he does: he also talks about how he wrote Diary of an Oxygen Thief and got it published and whatnot, and how he used an online dating site to catfish and scam people to purchase and read his book. The ending isn’t satisfying by any means.

In Diary of an Oxygen Thief, I felt genuine pity for him. Now I think he deserved what he got.

This book, compared to its predecessor, is like comparing a Chinese takeout menu to Fitzgerald’s Gatsby. It’s seriously disappointing. I’m upset that Barnes and Noble doesn’t accept returns. This book was just a desperate, feeble attempt to make more money off the bestseller.