I Disagree, Scott Westerfield

I have some (well, several, actually) customers who are awesome in epic proportions. One of those epically awesome people is Danielle.
I mentioned to her that I had wanted to read The Forest Of Hands And Teeth by Carrie Ryan and she said she had them and would be happy to lend them to me.

Yay, books!

So, she drops them by and I bring them home and curl up with the first of them.

Let me preface this by saying, I am not a teen fiction reader. I think some people assume that because I own a book shoppe, I've read just about everything in existence.

I have not.
Nor do I want to.

My foray into teen lit consists of two titles: one, The Unbecoming Of Mara Dyre by Michelle Hodkin which was fantastic and two, a title which will remain unnamed as I run the risk of offending several people when I say it was the worst piece of tripe I've ever had the displeasure of wasting three minutes of my life on. I read 4 pages before chucking it across the room.
Yeah; it was that bad.
So; I sit down with The Forest... and take a look at the cover. The blurb on the front reads: A post apocalyptic romance of the first order, elegantly written from title to last line. -Scott Westerfield

I know of Scott Westerfield; he wrote an incredibly popular and very relevant series for teens, The Uglies, which was well received by its target audience and critics alike, and I think, "Let's do this."
I open to the first page and begin.

... ... ...
(An aside: I'm a lit snob. I admit this fact wholeheartedly and with very little shame. But it's the only thing I'm a snob about and I figure, if your going to be up your own @ss about something, it may as well be literature, right?
Right.
Moving on...)

It's a good story, I'll give Ms. Ryan that. Outside of the tiniest hint of teenage angst (which is to be expected in any teen lit title) the characters are believable if somewhat one dimensional, and the plot moves quickly and with quite a bit of suspense and mystery.
I'm not going to give a summary of the book or review it; that's not what I'm here to do, today, at least.
My point is that, while the story is good, it is enjoyable (it doesn't make me want to rip the pages out and use them to cut my eyes just so I don't have witness the abomination those damnable publishers are trying to spoon feed me, as was the case with aforementioned unnamed title), it lacks depth.
Ryan's words do an admirable job of painting a picture, she tells a fine story; but the words are flat, black lettering on a page, she has no voice. Where is this elegance Mr. Westerfield speaks of?
Ray Bradbury is elegant. D.H. Lawrence was elegant. H.P. Lovecraft was elegant. David Moody, with all his gore and violence, is elegant. Their words don't just tell a story, they create art. They are deep and meaningful; each one is delicious as it goes down. 
It's not a bad book. I will recommend it again and again because I've thoroughly enjoyed it; but elegant?
I'm sorry, Mr. Westerfield, but I call bull-#*!.

Until next time, happy reading...
-Britaini