Review: “Red Queen” by Victoria Aveyard

Recommended beverage while reading: Put some cranberry juice cocktail in a sippy cup and get in the right frame of mind to read this book.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars.

The poverty stricken Reds are commoners, living under the rule of the Silvers, elite warriors with god-like powers.

To Mare Barrow, a 17-year-old Red girl from The Stilts, it looks like nothing will ever change.

Mare finds herself working in the Silver Palace, at the centre of
those she hates the most. She quickly discovers that, despite her red blood, she possesses a deadly power of her own. One that threatens to destroy Silver control.

But power is a dangerous game. And in this world divided by blood, who will win? (Goodreads)

First off, I will state that my opinion does not coincide with those of pretty much everyone. I didn’t like this book at all. I’m sorry! I don’t want to offend anyone, because if you liked this book, then good! I’m glad you liked it. I, however, did not.

Red Queen had potential. I can see that. But so do a lot of books. The idea of it was somewhat interesting, but has been done about a thousand times. It’s your generic dystopian YA novel, with a love triangle and a twist you see coming from a mile off.

I could not for the life of me get attached to the characters, and didn’t care a bit when they were in “danger”. Mare was portrayed as being this savior for the Reds — the one who would save them ALL! The Red QUEEN. She continuously talked about doing anything to save her family and friends and all the reds, which should make her a mature and generous character, right? She’s not. She’s immature and whiny.

And I understand that Aveyard was trying to portray that you can make a case for or against war, depending on your point of view, and what you have to gain and whatever. War is a grey-area. I get that, and honestly, I love grey areas! I’m reading Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut and just read Welcome to the Monkey House (review to come soon, hopefully), and that is how you do grey area. You don’t shove it in people’s faces. The best way to pull off a message like that is with subtlety, in my opinion. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen.

Where subtlety was used, however, was in the dystopian aspect. And I liked that. Most of the time it read like fantasy, and then you’d get a little glimpse of what happened “before”, just to remind you that this is probably post-apocalyptic. I liked that there were little islands of text that hinted at a history not described. But that’s about all I liked, really.

I think that if you want to get into the genre, you might like this as a stepping stone. There are much better dystopian reads out there, though. There is no shortage of them in fact.

TL;DR: Didn’t like it. Definitely will not be continuing the series. But I get that lots of people LOVE this book! Which is perfectly okay, so I hope it’s okay that I disagree.

Review: “Steelheart” by Brandon Sanderson

Recommended beverage while reading: Chai tea. I haven’t a reason why. Just do it!

Rating: 4.89700345

Ten years ago, Calamity came. It was a burst in the sky that gave ordinary men and women extraordinary powers. The awed public started calling them Epics. But Epics are no friend of man. With incredible gifts came the desire to rule. And to rule man you must crush his wills.

Nobody fights the Epics…nobody but the Reckoners. A shadowy group of ordinary humans, they spend their lives studying Epics, finding their weaknesses, and then assassinating them.

And David wants in. He wants Steelheart – the Epic who is said to be invincible. The Epic who killed David’s father. For years, like the Reckoners, David’s been studying, and planning – and he has something they need. Not an object, but an experience.

He’s seen Steelheart bleed. And he wants revenge.(Goodreads)

So, I currently own two other Brandon Sanderson books: Mistborn: The Final Empire and The Way of Kings. I have read neither of them. I made a valiant attempt at Mistborn last month, and mulishly continue to say that I am “still reading it”, even though the last time I opened it was to retrieve my favorite bookmark. I hope to finish it at some point, because it is very good, and I can’t say why I put it down. Perhaps I was just intimidated.

But now that I’ve completed an actual Sanderson novel, perhaps it’ll give me the strength to push through Mistborn. Anyway, to the real task at hand: reviewing Steelheart.

I don’t know about you guys, but whenever I read futuristic/dystopian books, I have this idea of a perfect and amazingly interesting world. For some reason, I’m fascinated by a life lived underground and the challenges humans would face in that. I think that’s part of the reason the only video game I’ve liked has been Fallout. But anyway, the books never quite achieve this weird world I want to see happen. That is, until now.

I went into this without a clear picture of what the world would be like, but as I continued on, it progressively got more and more interesting. Something along the lines of “This is so effing cool” went through my mind countless times. And of course, because Sanderson has experience writing massive pieces of fantasy, his talent for world building is profound. I would say read this book for it’s world, but honestly, that’s not the case.

Because you could also read it for the characters. They all have quirky character traits that make you want to love them, without these traits being all up in your face and annoying. I loved David’s inability to create a decent metaphor, but that he always had a logical reason behind them. I loved Abraham’s slightly different way of speaking. And I loved Tia’s seemingly unhealthy relationship with cola. And Cody’s obsession with his Scottish heritage. I liked that though these people are completely different, they’re all working toward the same goal. It doesn’t matter that all these people have different reasons for fighting the epics, because they know it doesn’t matter.

Honestly, though I loved this book while reading it, I thought it was pretty straightforward as far as plot goes. And then. Fricking plot twist(s). I suspected them both, but didn’t think that both would happen, and really didn’t see the information being revealed in the last 10 pages of the book. Ugh. When a book actually manages to surprise me, it automatically gets a better rating. I mean, I wasn’t planning on giving this anything less than 4.5 stars, but that plot twist boosted it an extra ~0.35 star (Don’t give me that look. It matters!).

Plus Sanderson left enough unanswered and hinted at that you know the next book will be just as fabulous. I am so eager to read the next one. All hail Brandon Sanderson!

TL;DR: Read the book. The world is crazy interesting. The plot sucks you in. The characters are funny and endearing.

Review: “Shutter”, by Courtney Alameda

Recommended beverage while reading: Hot cocoa, because you might need something a little more comforting. Just bring a bag of marshmallows with you, too.

PopSugar Challenge category: “A book set in your hometown” — this book takes place in San Francisco, and technically I was born outside of there and moved when I was a few years old. BUT, I still count SF as my second hometown because I have family there and have visited enough times for it to still feel like a home.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars.

Micheline Helsing is a tetrachromat—a girl who sees the auras of the undead in a prismatic spectrum. As one of the last descendants of the Van Helsing lineage, she has trained since childhood to destroy monsters both corporeal and spiritual: the corporeal undead go down by the bullet, the spiritual undead by the lens. With an analog SLR camera as her best weapon, Micheline exorcises ghosts by capturing their spiritual energy on film. She’s aided by her crew: Oliver, a techno-whiz and the boy who developed her camera’s technology; Jude, who can predict death; and Ryder, the boy Micheline has known and loved forever.

When a routine ghost hunt goes awry, Micheline and the boys are infected with a curse known as a soulchain. As the ghostly chains spread through their bodies, Micheline learns that if she doesn’t exorcise her entity in seven days or less, she and her friends will die. Now pursued as a renegade agent by her monster-hunting father, Leonard Helsing, she must track and destroy an entity more powerful than anything she’s faced before . . . or die trying. (Goodreads)

As some of you may recall, I posted a while back about the books I was looking forward to seeing released in the month of February. This was one of them! I had the privilege of working with Courtney before she became a published author and remember her talking about the book she was working on. Ever since, it’s been in the back of my mind to keep an eye out for her book. So when I looked it up and saw that everyone who had read an ARC absolutely loved it, I was incredibly excited. I put the release date down in my planner and everything (yes, I write the release dates of books down in my calendar). And when I got my hands on it, I couldn’t wait to start. I mean, that blurb? How could you not be excited?

So, when I finally did start it (in the midst of a ghost battle), and it was full of action and crazy battles, I was surprised that it still took me so long to get into the book. I mean, I liked all of the characters and wanted to see what happened, but for some reason, I couldn’t sit there and read it straight through. It wasn’t because it was scary (though it was at times, I just don’t generally feel terrified by books) or dull, and for the longest time I couldn’t put my finger on it. Finally, I figured out that it was because I got bogged down in the descriptions and similes and metaphors. It seemed like everything had an adjective attached, and that kind of detracted from the fast-paced craziness of the rest of the book. That being said, I can still see the value in this writing style, because it really shows how much research Alameda put into her work. I appreciate that.

Once I figured out what my problem was though, it was a lot easier to read. As you can tell, the rating didn’t suffer too much from this teeny problem. And, really, that was the only thing I took issue with. Everything else was awesome. I would have given 4 stars even if the characters were annoying, simply for uniqueness alone. When I was reading it, there were moments when I just paused and thought, “Really, how did she come up with this one”.

Also, I really enjoyed the camaraderie of the main characters. Of course, there’s a love interest, but there’s no love triangle, which seems almost ground-breaking in the world of YA. I liked that even though there was romance, it didn’t get top billing. It makes sense that, in the midst of hunting down murderous and psychopathic ghosts, they might not have time to worry about their next make-out session.

Okay, another thing, there were hints of a necrotic disaster to hit parts of the world, and everyone seems to know and accept that zombies and ghosts are real things. But we never get a full back-story. That may sound annoying, but honestly I loved it. The way to survive is to live in the here and now, just like Micheline, who suffered a terrible loss but made it through by trying not to remain focused on the past. Eventually, she comes to terms with it and confronts her past, so that she’s truly healed.

That being said….I still want to know what happened! I like that it wasn’t in this particular book, but if you ever happen to read this, Courtney, just know that I think people would love a prequel. Also, a sequel!

TL;DR: Read this! It’s well-written and the plot is incredibly unique in the YA world. It’s action-packed and full of wonderful ideas. So yeah. Just do it.

Review: “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before”, by Jenny Han

Recommended beverage while reading: A soy vanilla latte!

PopSugar challenge category: “A book recommended by a friend”

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars.

To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before is the story of Lara Jean, who has never openly admitted her crushes, but instead wrote each boy a letter about how she felt, sealed it, and hid it in a box under her bed. But one day Lara Jean discovers that somehow her secret box of letters has been mailed, causing all her crushes from her past to confront her about the letters: her first kiss, the boy from summer camp, even her sister’s ex-boyfriend, Josh. As she learns to deal with her past loves face to face, Lara Jean discovers that something good may come out of these letters after all. (Goodreads)

This book was recommended not only by my friend, but also by everyone who read it (seems like). I honestly think I did this book a disservice by reading it right now, but there’s no helping that at this point. You see, I’m afraid I’m a little burned out on YA Contemporary. Unfortunate, really. The same thing happened with Dystopian, and I still haven’t recovered from that. But I think I caught this particular burnout early, so there shouldn’t be too much of a backlash.

Anywho. Onto the review! First, I will say that this book was unique in that I not only liked all of the characters, but I identified with traits of all the “Song girls”. So, for that reason, I loved reading about their interactions as a group. And it took me less than a day to read this one, so it was still engaging enough to keep me going.

However, it did feel somewhat like a zainy RomCom movie, and I have trouble even investing an hour and a half into those. Like, why would Lara Jean need to pretend to have a boyfriend? And why does it have to be a real person attending their high school? And why does that dude feel like it’s a good idea to keep the front up? None of it makes sense. Which, I feel compelled to add, Lara Jean does point out after-the-fact. I appreciate that because she’s clearly a pretty self-aware character, and that doesn’t happen often. A lot of times I spend most of the book mentally shaking my fist at the “heroine” and telling her to be less derpy. I really didn’t do that much in To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before.

It’s because I love the characters so much that I know that if I hadn’t read this one at the end of a burnout, I would have liked it so much more. Perhaps I’ll reread it at some point so I get a better feel for it. And then I’ll read the sequel, because I really don’t want to make the same mistake twice. At this point, though, P.S. I Still Love You isn’t at the top of my TBR.

I don’t really know when I’ll get to it, but I think I will at some point. If I don’t get distracted. Me? Distracted by other books? Nah.

I’d still recommend this book to fans of Stephanie Perkins or even Rainbow Rowell and John Green.

Review: “Isla and the Happily Ever After”, Stephanie Perkins

Recommended beverage while reading: very strong, very hot, black coffee.

PopSugar challenge category: “A book you can read in a day”

Rating: about 3.5 out of 5 stars.

Hopeless romantic Isla has had a crush on introspective cartoonist Josh since their first year at the School of America in Paris. And after a chance encounter in Manhattan over the summer, romance might be closer than Isla imagined. But as they begin their senior year back in France, Isla and Josh are forced to confront the challenges every young couple must face, including family drama, uncertainty about their college futures, and the very real possibility of being apart. (Goodreads)

Alrighty, so Isla and the Happily Ever After is the final installment of the Anna and the French Kiss series, just in case anyone isn’t aware. But they’re only a series in that they have some overlapping characters and that they follow the same basic story outline. They focus on different characters, while still letting us check in on the previous books’ story-lines. Which I love. I dunno about you all, but there’s just something about finding out what’s going on in the background of a story, or seeing the same story from another person’s perspective that I find immensely enjoyable.

Maybe it’s because we get to check in on both Anna and Etienne and Lola and Cricket that this is my favorite of the series. Or maybe that’s part of the reason, anyway. I think the main reason that I liked this one best was that I related to Isla more than I did to either Anna or Lola. I mean, yes, I liked them both, but I know what Isla deals with when she berates herself. Sometimes it’s just easier to believe in other people’s abilities than it is to believe in your own.

That being said, I did have my issues with it. But I think it’s more that I have my issues with YA contemporary romances in general. In my Goodreads review I said “The fluff level is just gnawingly saccharine. It was like inhaling cotton candy.” And, like candy, it was addicting. Don’t get me wrong — it was enjoyable. But at the same time, perhaps marthoning it wasn’t the best idea. For some reason, doing that just makes all the problems that much more irritating.

**Possible spoilery-ness ahead**

The problems Isla and Josh faced just seemed so inconsequential, you know? I get that that’s part of the deal — their love is so powerful that any problems should seem bearable. And I get that teenagers are dumb and make stupid, impulsive, masochistic decisions. Even knowing all of that, I still didn’t really feel like that the “obstacle” our main characters had to face really made that much sense, and I didn’t really see that it was as earth shattering as it was supposed to be. Maybe I’m just getting too old and pessimistic (or as I like to say, realistic) for YA.

**End of “spoilers”**

Anyway, the series is now finished, and I don’t feel all that torn up about it. I hear that Stephanie Perkins’ next novel is going to be a horror/slasher, and you know what? I am pretty damn excited about it, because despite my problems with these books, I recognize that Perkins has a gift for description, and for writing relatable characters. This genre is so far from what I’m used to seeing from her that I can’t help but be eager to see what it’s like.

I’d recommend this series to fans of John Green and Rainbow Rowell. And possibly Gayle Forman (even though I have given up on ever liking one of her books).

Review: “Stolen”, by Lucy Christopher

Recommended beverage while reading: Just grab some water. Trust me.

PopSugar challenge category: “A book set in a different country.”

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars.

It happened like this. I was stolen from an airport. Taken from everything I knew, everything I was used to. Taken to sand and heat, dirt and danger. And he expected me to love him.

This is my story.

A letter from nowhere.

Sixteen year old Gemma is kidnapped from Bangkok airport and taken to the Australian Outback. This wild and desolate landscape becomes almost a character in the book, so vividly is it described. Ty, her captor, is no stereotype. He is young, fit and completely gorgeous. This new life in the wilderness has been years in the planning. He loves only her, wants only her. Under the hot glare of the Australian sun, cut off from the world outside, can the force of his love make Gemma love him back?

The story takes the form of a letter, written by Gemma to Ty, reflecting on those strange and disturbing months in the outback. Months when the lines between love and obsession, and love and dependency, blur until they don’t exist – almost. (Goodreads)

So often I read books that have been hyped by what seems like everyone, and I’m left unimpressed. This, however, was not one of those books. I read it in one day and hardly put it down, except when necessary.

It’s told in first-person, past-tense, as a letter from Gemma to her captor. I didn’t think I would enjoy this style, but let’s be real, when have I ever been right on that front? Seems like never. It helped me feel like I understood Gemma and her confusion, because we were getting everything from her perspective, and all her secret thoughts and actions. So even though I’ve never been in a situation remotely similar to Gemma’s, I still felt like I totally related to her. That’s when you know an author is really good at his/her job.

And let’s just talk about Christopher’s writing for a minute. I don’t know all the technical terms and what not, but I can only describe her writing in Stolen as “lyrical”. Sometimes I felt like I was reading poetry. And other times I read a passage and then had to pause, because, re-reading it, I realized that it was a pretty weird way of describing something, but it was also perfect. Unfortunately, I didn’t bother to mark these passages because I couldn’t be bothered to put the book down for three seconds. Sorry, y’all, guess you’ll have to read it yourself to find these magical examples of writing!

By the end of this, I was just as confused about my feelings toward Ty as our main character. Was what we (because by the end of the book, it is we not her) were feeling completely Stockholm Syndrome? Ty was a monster for what he did to Gemma, but was he truly an awful person? Was he deranged? Or was everything he said a complete lie, geared toward making Gemma his?

**Possibly a bit spoiler-y?**

Toward the middle of this, I was actually rooting for Gemma to stay with Ty. I mean, sure, he kidnapped her and spirited her away to the middle of fricking nowhere. But he also seemed to genuinely care for Gemma. I think at that point, Gemma was secretly rooting for them, too. By the end of it, though, Gemma and her audience understand the choice she ultimately made. I won’t say more. But the fact that her audience goes through the same emotional turmoil and confusion that she experiences simply goes to show that Christopher is extremely talented.

**No more spoiler-y-ness**

But I will warn you that if you’re in the mood for fluff, do not read this. It was amazing, but by the end of it, I was so emotionally drained that I sat there in a somewhat stunned silence. I don’t remember ever feeling so tired after reading a book, but sometimes that’s just what we need.

I’d honestly recommend this to anyone, but especially to people who enjoyed Room by Emma Donoghue or for people who like books that are very morally gray.

Thanks, as always, for reading! Tell me what you thought of it, if you want! I’d love to hear everyone’s thoughts. 🙂

Review: “Dorothy Must Die”, by Danielle Paige

Recommended beverage while reading: very strong lemonade. Pucker up!

PopSugar challenge category: A book set somewhere you’ve always wanted to visit. (So it’s an imaginary place — it could happen).

Rating: ~4.2 out of 5 stars.

I didn’t ask for any of this. I didn’t ask to be some kind of hero.

But when your whole life gets swept up by a tornado – taking you with it – you have no choice but to go along, you know?

Sure, I’ve read the books. I’ve seen the movies. I know the song about the rainbow and the happy little bluebirds. But I never expected Oz to look like this. To be a place where Good Witches can’t be trusted, Wicked Witches may just be the good guys, and winged monkeys can be executed for acts of rebellion. There’s still a yellow brick road – but even that’s crumbling.

What happened? Dorothy.

They say she found a way to come back to Oz. They say she seized power and the power went to her head. And now no one is safe.

My name is Amy Gumm – and I’m the other girl from Kansas.

I’ve been recruited by the Revolutionary Order of the Wicked.

I’ve been trained to fight.

And I have a mission. (Goodreads)

As so many of my reviews seem to start out, here, I was kind of hesitant to read this book but finally gave in due to the fact that I was seeing it everywhere. And, unlike a lot of my reviews, it actually lived up to the hype. Surprised? Not nearly as much as I was, let me tell you.

This book could easily have been dumb and cliche and dull, but it was none of those things. The idea behind it is brilliant. I’ve mentioned before that I love fairytale re-tellings, and while The Wizard of Oz might not be a fairytale in the truest sense of the word, it may as well be in my world. It’s just as much a part of my childhood as Grimm or Andersen

I have no idea how authors come up with the ideas they do. But even though Baum may have created the world of Oz first, it still took an amazing amount of talent and imagination for Paige to write Dorothy Must Die, and to do it well. She isn’t any less talented for not creating the world in which she wrote, especially since it really isn’t the same world Baum created. The descriptions were vivid and I got wrapped up into the goings-on almost immediately.

Amy could very easily have annoyed the hell out of me, but she didn’t. I actually really liked her, which is pretty rare for me. I loved that she always knew the right thing to do and that she was beyond snarky. I loved that she came into her own so quickly and that she shrugged off a lot of things she didn’t understand and just accepted them. I have no patience for characters who constantly mull over things that I know aren’t really important to the storyline. Maybe it’s supposed to be more realistic for them to try to understand everything going on in their life, but from personal experience, I think not. More than that, though, she’s smart. A lot of female leads are theoretically smart, just because that’s what we’re told. But do they demonstrate their supposed mental prowess? Hardly. You know those situations where you’re yelling at the character because they obviously missed that this person is clearly trying to tell them something and they’re just too dense to see it? Yep, not in this one. Amy’s already telling you she sees it. It was such a relief not to feel irritated with the heroine.

Another thing I enjoyed was the action. There may not have been a whole ton of true action scenes, but there was always something going on, and it was clear that there was always a goal on the horizon. By the end of this book, I was yelling (okay maybe not yelling, but I did raise my voice) from frustration because of reasons I will not go into due to spoilers. But it wasn’t the awful kind of frustration, it was the kind that just reaffirms that the book is really well written and that you’re truly invested in its plot.

A few days ago, I wrote a post about the books I was looking forward to be released next month, and I left off The Wicked Will Rise, because I hadn’t started this one. Well, suffice it to say that it now has top priority on my list, as well as The Orphan Queen.

I’d recommend this to people who enjoy fairytale re-tellings (obviously). Maybe even fans of Wicked, but I don’t know that I’d recommend it to big fans of the original The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.  Now, to keep frustration levels down, I think I’ll move on to reading the prequel novellas!

Book Review: “The Infinite Moment of Us”, by Lauren Myracle

Recommended beverage while reading: Champagne! Okay, maybe some sparkling cider then?

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars.

Wren Gray has spent her first 18 years pleasing her parents, earning perfect grades and early acceptance into the school and program her dad was hoping for, and, of course, keeping clear of boyfriends. Charlie Parker has spent his first 18 years navigating through foster homes and maintaing his position under the radar. He has loved Wren since the first time he saw her. When chance brings them together for their first conversation, it’s electric, and they both know that neither one of them will ever be the same. Wren just might have the courage to look for what she wants out of life-and Charlie just might finally know what true love is.

This month has not been good to me, reading-wise. It’s taking me much longer to finish books than it did last month. Needless to say, I’m a bit surprised that I managed to finish this one so quickly. I started it last night and finished it this morning. You’d think that’d mean that I loved it. Not the case.

Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t bad. It just wasn’t particularly fabulous.
It was your typical YA/New Adult contemporary. The writing was alright, but I think my main problem was that the characters were irritating. I understand that love is supposed to be confusing and difficult and makes us do stupid things. And I understand that 18 year olds can be immature and dumb. But at the same time, it can be irritating to deal with emotional and immature characters for over 300 pages.

That being said, I will admit that it gave me the feels on multiple occasions and I got butterflies and all that jazz. So, if you’re in a slump after reading an emotionally draining book or something, go for it! It flies by quickly and doesn’t take a whole lot of investment. 

I’d recommend it for fans of Meg Cabot books, or possibly of Gayle Forman as well.

Book Review: “Rebel Belle”, by Rachel Hawkins

Recommended beverage while reading: Sweet tea.

Rating: 3/5 stars.

PopSugar reading challenge category: None.

Harper Price, peerless Southern belle, was born ready for a Homecoming tiara. But after a strange run-in at the dance imbues her with incredible abilities, Harper’s destiny takes a turn for the seriously weird. She becomes a Paladin, one of an ancient line of guardians with agility, super strength and lethal fighting instincts.

Just when life can’t get any more disastrously crazy, Harper finds out who she’s charged to protect: David Stark, school reporter, subject of a mysterious prophecy and possibly Harper’s least favorite person. But things get complicated when Harper starts falling for him—and discovers that David’s own fate could very well be to destroy Earth. (Goodreads)

I made the mistake of listening to the audiobook again. I’m kind of undecided as to whether I should just give up on audiobooks entirely, or whether I should just risk hating the narrators and possibly taking that out on the books. On the one hand, I enjoy being able to listen to books while doing other things (running, biking, baking, doing puzzles…), but on the other, the narrators so often piss me off that it’s almost not worth it. I don’t know if I’m judging the books too harshly or if hearing it read aloud simply highlights problems I might otherwise overlook.

Either way, I didn’t much care for this one. I mean, no, it wasn’t terrible. I gave it 3 out of 5 stars, so there are worse things out there. I think I was disappointed just because it was so mediocre. The writing was alright, the characters were okay, the plot-line was pretty cool. But there was no oomph to it, you know? I wasn’t attached to the characters, and the story kind of plodded along with no sense of urgency. I could almost get behind that second issue if I thought Hawkins did it on purpose. You know, to highlight the slow lifestyle so typical of every small Southern town in literary history. But I highly doubt that’s the case.

I don’t want to rip this book to shreds, though, because it doesn’t deserve it. The plot-line has the potential to be super badass, and I think it might fully achieve that as the series continues. Now that the characters have all come into their “superpowers”, things might get much more awesome.

Overall, I’d have to say that I might continue on with the series. It’s not at the top of the TBR pile, and I definitely won’t be listening to the book, but we’ll see. Have you guys read this one? What do you think of it?

Book Review: “I Was Here”, by Gayle Forman

Recommended Beverage while reading: Black coffee.

Overall rating: Between 2.5 and 3 stars.

PopSugar category: “Book published this year”.

Cody and Meg were inseparable.
Two peas in a pod.
Until . . . they weren’t anymore.

When her best friend Meg drinks a bottle of industrial-strength cleaner alone in a motel room, Cody is understandably shocked and devastated. She and Meg shared everything—so how was there no warning? But when Cody travels to Meg’s college town to pack up the belongings left behind, she discovers that there’s a lot that Meg never told her. About her old roommates, the sort of people Cody never would have met in her dead-end small town in Washington. About Ben McAllister, the boy with a guitar and a sneer, who broke Meg’s heart. And about an encrypted computer file that Cody can’t open—until she does, and suddenly everything Cody thought she knew about her best friend’s death gets thrown into question. (Goodreads)

This book has been all over Instagram lately, so I decided to give it a shot. Though I didn’t like If I Stay, one cannot judge an entire author’s work on one book. However, after listening (audiobook) to this one, I think I’m going to have to admit that Gayle Forman is just not for me.

I think the main problem I’ve had with her books (though it’s only been two), is that her female characters tend to be one-dimensional and somewhat weak. They’re petulant and annoying and whiny. Okay, so the problems they have to deal with are rather dramatic and awful. And it makes sense that they’d have troubles. But there’s a way to pull it off, and Forman just never seems to quite get there.

It was kind of similar to This Song Will Save Your Life, in that way. I liked the message it sent, but not the rest of it. Mental illness is a serious issue and I’m glad that Forman isn’t afraid to touch issues that other authors might stay away from. And I’m glad that so many people like it and it’s getting so much press because maybe it will help someone who is dealing with the problems Meg was.

Ugh. But, for God’s sake, I just wanted to punch Cody in the throat the entire book. Alright, I get it. Her best friend committed suicide and of course she had a hard time dealing with it. Forman did manage to impart that message on me. I was able to grasp that it would be one of the worst experiences a person could go through. It didn’t stop me from hating the “heroine” of the book.

So, unfortunately, I don’t think I’ll be reading anymore of her books.

Keep in mind that this is all just my opinion, and that a lot of people really love her work! Maybe I just don’t get it. ;]