(There aren't really any plot spoilers in here, but I marked it as such because it's a general overview and I myself would want to avoid that if I hadn't cracked open the book yet) I wanted to love this book SO bad! When I saw the cover in my YA Lit class syllabus (I'm 27 and NOT one to hate a book just because it's required reading; for example, I hate poetry but the first novel we read in this class was in verse and I adored it) and read the prologue, I thought it was going to be AWESOME…
And then I continued reading. Oh my gosh, what a concept wasted on poor, boring execution. It could have been INCREDIBLE, but even I, a person who tends to enjoy being told rather than shown because the brain doesn't have to piece things together (I'm a tired college student okay?xD), quickly got tired of the info dumps. The author also seems to love using fragment sentences, and on more than one occasion I had to reread something to realize what they actually meant to say because it just didn't read right. The characters feel like stock characters– the love interest, the nerdy science geek, the jock brother, etc. And the MC will feel one way one minute and then just COMPLETELY change within a page or two without anything triggering that change (like how she'll decide one thing about another character and then it's as if she never came to that conclusion based on what she does with them or says a page or two later). And… it's *boring*. Oh my word, is it such a slog to get through. Just when it gets exciting, it's back to running or back to basic hockey stuff or back to driving a vehicle with nothing else going on. It feels like it could have been at least one hundred pages shorter because so much of what I've read feels unnecessary to the actual point.
According to GoodReads, I'm 61% of the way through, but I'd honestly DNF it if I didn't have to read it for university. I'm trying to wrap my head around why so many people think it's such a great book. Like, of course it's great to see representation in books (another reason I was excited to read it), but aside from that… I just don't get it. Though I DO want a Grandma June spinoff, haha. Grandma June superiority!
by Mobius8321