Triple ARC Review: Those Girls - Lauren Saft

Those Girls
Lauren Saft 
Series: N/A
Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary
Release Date: June 9, 2015
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers: Poppy
Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
Goodreads | Amazon | Book Depository

Thanks to Little, Brown Books for Young Readers for the eARC I received via Netgalley!

The more I think about this book, the more I dislike it.

Those Girls is about three girls who are "friends" and what they go through as their junior year progresses. Each of these girls is facing her own problem: Mollie is having trouble keeping her boyfriend interested in her, Veronica is trying to shed her reputation for being easy, and Alex is trying to deal with the guy she's in love with dating someone else. This all sounds fine and like it could potentially be interesting since the three friends are keeping these secrets from each other; however, things soon go horribly terribly wrong.

I was intrigued by this premise of three friends at odds with each other, but as I started reading Those Girls, I realized that the actual premise was different from what I thought it would be. These characters all come from pretty well off families and attend an all girls prep school. When they're not at school, they're pretty much always partying, smoking weed, or having sex.

On some level, I was intrigued because it seemed like it would have a Gossip Girl vibe; however, even though it's similar, Those Girls misses the mark in being a Gossip Girl-esque story in many ways. One thing that I think made Gossip Girl so great was the metropolitan high life aspect - the characters had some class. On the other hand, Those Girls took place in a suburb and it felt like a small town full of spoiled kids. The other main thing that was a problem was that the main characters of Those Girls were horrible people. Sure, the characters of Gossip Girl weren't saints, but the characters of Those Girls rarely redeemed themselves for their poor behavior. Combining their behavior with their everyday setting, the characters of Those Girls can't be forgiven as much as those of Gossip Girl.

The one character who sometimes showed some redeeming qualities was Alex. I didn't particularly like Mollie or Veronica, even at the very beginning - I found it really hard to connect with them - but at least Alex seemed like a real, relatable character for most of the book. If it were up to me, I'd probably have a book just about Alex and remove her friends. Yes, it would be a bit cliché - girl in love with best friend since forever - but at least it would remove her horrible friends who make her do horrible things.

Did I mention that Mollie and Veronica were horrible? I don't want to spoil anything for anyone who might want to read this book, but all three of these girls have awful double standards and do things to each other that makes one question if they're really friends at all. I guess in some ways Lauren Saft succeeded in showing how horrible people interact and somehow are still friends for whatever reason, but it felt more like trying for shock and horror rather than actually exposing the wrongs of society. Especially with the ending of this book, where the girls are still friends but are still horrible people and it doesn't make any sense how they even forgave each other because THEY'RE HORRIBLE.

I feel really bad about this review. (Amrutha's mom calls me the "Paula" of WLABB). I hate writing negative reviews because I know someone put their heart and soul into writing the book I am bashing, but I can't help ranting over this one. The thing is, I can't say that there was absolutely nothing good about this book - after all, I did finish it. There were moments where I saw the characters actually growing and escaping from the things that made them horrible, but ultimately they remained horrible, one of them even losing the person that made her less horrible.

As a character based reader, the thing that kept me from liking this book was the horrible characters (horrible in the sense that they have poor moral standards, not in the sense that they are poorly written). I didn't like what these characters did to each other, and I didn't like how someone could read this book and potentially think that their actions were ok in the end. I think there are people who could really enjoy this book; I'm just not one of them.

- Kiersten

Noor's Review
Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

Those Girls was honestly so whack -- I didn't like the book, Amrutha didn't like book, Kiersten really didn't like the book -- she rated it a full star lower than both Amrutha and I, which usually doesn't happen because she feels bad being mean. It isn't enough to just give it a low star rating and move on though because I have such a strange mix of emotions about this book (not mixed feelings, I know I'm not a fan of it) -- I was entertained enough to keep reading and it wasn't one of those books where you force yourself to make it through page after grueling page so you can bash it. I might not have enjoyed the book but it kept me mentally occupied enough that I could feel what I was reading and wanted to know where the story was progressing, if you could call these storylines progress. But anyway, I didn't force myself to finish it. And then, the very first page of the book, I thought the voice was gonna be all weird and awkward sounding and shift tenses because there were a few phrases in the first few paragraphs that I guess I just wouldn't have had there and I was bracing myself for a super poorly composed novel but then that quickly changed and the actual writing composition was fine for the most part although the character voices were intriguing not in that they were poorly written but just in what they said about each other.

Anyway, thats about it for my mixed feelings, let's move on to what I'm certain of: why the book wasn't good. One of the biggest things was the characters. Alex, Veronica, and Mollie are all juniors in high school and honestly don't act like it at all. They're also supposed to be best friends but they like, hate each other and are catty and rude and it's all really extra and hella OD. In one of the scenes in the very beginning -- this is the first day of school, I'm pretty sure -- Mollie's internal monologue describes Alex as such:

"I watched Alex talk to the seniors, all her clothes hanging off her like she couldn't be bothers to actually put them on, but just mustered the energy to drape herself in whatever stained, wrinkled item was lying on her closet floor."

Like, rude much? And there's so much of this. From all three of them. I get sometimes you feel trapped in your friendships blahblahblah but honestly if you three hate each other this much just get out of this already. Alex already has a guy best friend (who she's in love with in case you didn't pick up on it on one of the times she mentioned it every five seconds), Mollie and Veronica have other friends who invite them to parties and stuff. They'd deal.

I've read novels with purposefully unlikeable protagonists. I've read novels where I just personally didn't like the main character and most people did. This is a different case altogether. In this book, none of the characters are even remotely redeemable, even by the end (sorry spoiler alert not that sorry) and they aren't unlikeable for any sort of reason other than they just are because they're annoying people and that's how they roll. And honestly, I could read a book with terrible main characters. I can suck it up. But this book just has so much weird content as well. I'm the last person to regulate anyone's use of anything or attendance of anything but this book overdoes the parties and illegal substances and relationships and all that stuff to such an extent that I just don't want to read about it anymore and the main characters start to annoy me because of their associations with their actions.

Also, Amrutha mentions this in her review, but Mollie and Veronica have the same voice. It really bothered me that if she was going to use different voice she couldn't have bothered to flesh them out. Adding profanity to Mollie's voice does not make give her depth and dimension and gets very old very fast. In the beginning, I thought Veronica was nuanced and wasn't bothered but the more I read the more I felt like they were essentially the same voice. Also, even though Alex's voice remained recognizably different doesn't mean I liked her character. I wasn't a fan of the way she mentioned her love for her best friend so often. Like there's one scene where she says "I knew he wasn't intentionally putting his arm around me, but I liked to pretend that he was. I liked to think that if someone had seen us right then at that moment, they might have thought we were a couple." His arm was reaching for the back of her headrest so he could reverse because that's how you reverse that's like driving 101. Please tell me I'm not the only one who sees a problem with this. It'd be ok if it was a few times but every time he's even a little bit near or thinks about being near she gets like this. It's ridiculous.

Overall, it was a largely unsatisfying book and the characters were all really annoying but there are some gems in there (like not quality, like to laugh at and wonder how it got published gems) so if you want to read it go for it.

- Noor

Amrutha's Review
Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

Wow, as the Simon of WLABB (Kiersten is Paula as mentioned above, and yes we are referencing the glory days of American Idol), it is a little embarrassing for me to admit that there is a book that Kiersten hates more than I do. But who'd have thought, I didn't hate this book /that/ much. Let's get started:

First of all, I got this book at BEA 2015, making this the very first BEA book I'm reviewing for this year! Also, I met Lauren Saft and she signed this book to me, captioned "I hope your friends are nicer than those girls," which, is, to say the least, something that anyone with even the most basic sense of humanity should hope for anyone else. I wouldn't wish the main characters of this novel on anyone.

So this book is about three girls who are all mildly sociopathic, from the get go calling their best friends sluts and bitches and whatever worse spoilery insult they could think of. God, just reading their descriptions of each other was exhausting. I went into this expecting friend drama and some backstabbing and boy trouble but this was another level of horrible. As Kiersten has touched upon above, it is impossible to like a book where all of the main characters are so unrelatable and just plain mean.

That being said, I did think they were fairly well constructed and for a while even seemed like character development was happening (although ultimately I didn't like how any of them turned out), it is clear that the characters were not neither static nor poorly written.

HOWEVER, while the actual characters themselves were not constructed poorly, the representation of their Point of Views was. This book would have been so much better off in third person omnipresent, because this author just struggled to differentiate between the distinct voices of the three main characters. Alex was easily the most distinguishable (incidentally, also the most tolerable of the three, so I'm thinking Lauren Saft had a particular affinity for her). Then there was Molly who basically is the exact same as Veronica, except she says the word "fucking" every sentence. I'm not kidding, I'm not sure why anyone who was involved in the publishing of this book didn't once think "huh, I think adding in one curse word into every sentence of an otherwise undistinguishable chapter to create the illusion of a point of view is a ridiculously transparent idea and we should work on melding this character into having her own voice." While I understand each of these girls are meant to share their cruel and downright unbelievable mindsets, I think having separate PoV chapters begs actually separate point of views.

Other than these major points of the well constructed but poorly developed and poorly voiced characters, this book was entirely mediocre. It contained at least one unpredictable plot point, which was added some ~interest~ and ~pizzazz~ to the book but all in all, just genuinely mediocre. Girls keep secrets. Girls get high and have sex and party it up, and somehow, their secrets unravel. Girls get hurt. Possible character development. No character development. Girls suck. Basically, that is the summation of this entire novel. Entirely uninteresting with a few pitfalls, but ultimately not bad enough that I feel the need to trash it all of the internet.

It was eh. If you want to read it, by all means, just try to remember that the characters might almost develop and not for a reason -- sometimes, I guess that happens in real life. It's just wholly unsatisfying to read about it in fiction, especially with these characters.

- Amrutha

Do you like books about mean girls?

Let us know in the comments!

Review: The Infinite Moment of Us - Lauren Myracle

The Infinite Moment of Us
Lauren Myracle
Genre: Young Adult, Romance
Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
Goodreads | Amazon | Book Depository 

I read this book as a TBR Jar challenge (I'm just not having luck with those, clearly) -- read a book solely judging by its cover. I didn't just select the book for the challenge based on the cover, but the cover is what attracted me to make the purchase in the first place. I bought this so long ago I honestly don't remember when or where I obtained it, but I recall seeing the pretty script and the colors and thinking I wanted it and the blurb seemed promising so I finally gave it a go.

Now I wish I'd just left it on my shelf and admired the pretty cover and not read the book. I feel like the best phrase to describe my opinions on this book is to say that I wasn't feeling it. I think that encompasses the way I feel like I couldn't form real connections and couldn't bring myself to care and was just reading for the sake of reading. I just wasn't feeling what this book was putting out, which wasn't much. And this is coming from someone who absolutely loves cheesy, cutesy romances and fluff and things of that sort so I'm not hating on that aspect or anything because of a personal negative genre bias.

My first grievance will be the characters, I guess, so there's a background, since the book was all about these two and their destined love. Wren is our main protagonist, and we meet her as she's graduating high school. So she's super smart and pretty and kind and probably perfect. And then we have Charlie, her counterpart, who is all quiet and closed off and doesn't really have friends and has a tragic backstory of course. And there's nothing wrong with writing characters who fit the descriptions of these characters -- I know I didn't go too in-depth, but you get the idea -- if you do it well and give them their own personalities and good dialogue and make them come to life but I literally felt like I was reading stock characters. They weren't well done at all.

And the dialogue really bothered me too. I know the opinions of characters are not the opinions of authors, but some of the things the characters said were just really questionable and propagated a lot of antifeminist ideas and I usually don't have a problem with problematic characters existing because that's how you have a dynamic cast of characters but in those cases it's easy to see that you shouldn't align your views with them, whereas here you were supposed to laugh and agree. I wish I could pull up some of the quotes here but I just moved back in from college and my books are packed away in a box, including this one.

Other than that, it honestly just wasn't well written. The beginning was okay and I thought it would pick up but it just didn't. The writing wasn't anything great and the plot was just annoying. Wren was selfish and annoying and made such illogical choices for someone who was supposedly so intelligent. Charlie obsessed with her in a weird way. She wanted him to drop everything for her and go travel with her and also there was some girl named Starrla thrown in there for conflict purposes but the entire book just focused on their romance, which honestly wasn't that great for being marketed as written in the stars or whatever. Like, I wouldn't mind an entire book spending all its pages on a romance. In fact, I'd be into it. I just need it to be something worth reading. Myracle decided to forgo so many possible areas where the could have explored the story -- Wren's relationship with her parents, Wren and why she needed to take a year off from school to travel, Charlie and his family, Charlie's brother. She briefly mentioned so many things and didn't provide enough elaboration to be satisfied and the book would have been so much better if she spent time fleshing out those aspects of their lives and still keeping the romance as a main plot point -- although the romance needs to be revamped very much too, but one step at a time, right?

- Noor

Have you encountered any terrible romances?
Let us know in the comments!

Double ARC Review: Anatomy of a Misfit - Andrea Portes

Anatomy of a Misfit
Andrea Portes
Series: N/A
Genre: Young Adult
Release Date: September 14th, 2014
Rating: 1.25 out of 5 Stars
Word Rating: :'( boo
Goodreads | Amazon | Book Depository

THE ONLY GOOD THING ABOUT THIS BOOK IS THE TITLE. TURN BACK NOW. DON'T TRY TO READ IT.

Geez. Where do I even start with this. I was so SO excited for Anatomy of a Misfit when I got it at BEA 2014, because lets be real, it has an awesome title and cool font on the cover (I'm usually pretty on point with judging books by their cover/title (side bar: if you've read any of my other reviews and notice a lot of them aren't good, I usually know when I won't like a book, but I try to read it anyway, because sometimes I am so wrong and turn out grateful that I read a book despite my initial issues with it)).

Alright, let us start off with the main character. OH MAN. This chick is whiny and obnoxious and so obsessed with the "pecking order" and I think she might actually be racist towards herself(????) and slut shames and I literally hate her so much. As a character, Anika is so annoying - while also being completely unrealistic. I understand that often, main characters feel super different from their peers and that is the foundation of the book. However, the "misfit" here, who is oh so different, is basically "the third most popular girl in school" who looks really "vanilla." She is self-described as someone with friends (although she basically talks shit about her friends in the book), and feels like she doesn't fit in because of her Romanian (vampire??? seriously she makes a lot of weird stereotypical racist remarks about her own heritage, which is especially weird because she grew up in a fancy home in Romania, and I've never come across a protagonist who was so inherently ignorant to her own culture). Also never come across a narrator who hates the last name "Dragomir," because, lets face it, that is a wicked awesome last name and anyone who doesn't appreciate it is just not my type of person. Plus she kept saying how she was like spider soup or spider stew and neither of those things sound particularly appealing or teenager-y to me.

Okay, other than the obnoxious narrator, there is the issue of the other characters. Pretty much everyone in this book is super static and stereotypical: nerd-gone-bad-boy (with a vespa? I wish I knew what was going through the author's mind), the queen bee (#1 in the very important pecking order), and the school slut (#2 in the pecking order and our girl Anika's best friend, despite the slut-shaming). I don't think I have to say anymore about these characters, we all feel the same about stereotypical, overdone characters, especially when they're not done right.

Moving on to romance: there was like a weird 3-way love triangle thing going on here, but the author made me want to root for no one, and when both guys fell for Anika(out of the blue, too), it was like insane instalove (like WOW, THE INSTALOVE HURTS). Logan and Jordan both fell for Anika so fast, and I feel bad saying this because it is clear that Portes put in the effort to make it seem like Logan and Anika had a meaningful relationship, but just to be honest, neither of these relationships were ship worthy.

Also like totally like this is gonna be such a full review of the book like woo! Did you enjoy reading that? I didn't like typing that. But unfortunately, this entire book is riddled with little "teenage" mannerisms, but these are intertwined in a way that is not classic or a way that sets the tone of the novel, but instead, in a way that just annoyed me. Sometimes, too many colloquialisms in writing is just off putting, and this was one of those times. To add to the issue, the writing was a little to middle school grade level (which I am usually okay with) but in this scenario, coupled with the teenager sayings and mannerisms, the writing just seemed of poor quality.

Also, the ending sucks and pretty much the whole book is just not worth the effort in my opinion. The plot moves a little too quickly for my taste, and while some humor is incorporated, the characters are just not worth the investment of time and Anika will drive you insane. At times the book had a good moment or two, but geez, do yourself a favor and don't bother reading this. The only good thing this book has going for itself is a rockin' title.

- Amrutha

Noor's Review
Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
Word Rating: Anatomically Incorrect 

I finished this book a few days ago, and have kind of been stewing over it because I really don't know how I feel about it. I don't think I hate it as much as Amrutha does, but I definitely do have issues with it. It's just that there are also some parts I really enjoyed so I don't know what to feel but maybe talking about the good and the bad will clear my mind by the end of this review.

The first thing I'd like to discuss is the fact that this book tried way too hard. In the description on Goodreads, it says "Anatomy of a Misfit is Mean Girls meets The Perks of Being a Wallflower" and I really think Andrea Portes put too much effort into making it just that and less into fleshing out her characters or her plots. Anyway, I'm not so sure she actually knows what high school is, or how it works, or how teenagers actually act. Either that or she chooses to ignore it in order to make her plot work. Like, there's the whole scene with the magazine and Stacy Nolan and how Anika, our dear protagonist, feels bad that Becky, resident Queen Bee, has spread a rumor that Stacy is pregnant (except Anika doesn't realize Becky herself made it up because she's dense or something) and decides that sitting next to her, as the third most popular girl in school, will make it all okay.  I mean, she does spread a counter rumor but it was all just so weird and unrealistic and also probably hella suspicious. Like, if you have never sat next to this girl ever and all of a sudden the day after a huge pregnancy rumor gets spread about her you're telling people it's not true and sharing magazines with her, people will figure something is weird about the situation. Anyway, people at her school are waaaaaay too preoccupied with who's dating the "losers" and who's hanging out where and all this stuff that I feel like doesn't actually happen in high school. Like yeah, I've had the occasional "They're a couple? Never would have expected that" moment in my four years of high school but like after the initial surprise I will probably never stop to care about their relationship status or social status ever. I couldn't name you the first, second, and third most popular girls in school but apparently the count isn't just in Anika's head because later Shelli and her have a discussion about how Shelli thinks she might be bumping up to two and Anika doesn't believe her. Also, Anika knows she will move past number 3 because her name is Anika Dragomir, which is weird and ethnic. Becky even calls her Immigrant, which is really problematic behavior but Anika apparently doesn't care because she wishes to be rid of her vampire blood pretty badly. Anyway, I don't think I've ever seen anyone's name get in the way of their social standing. I mean, in the real world, ethnicity and names and all that stuff actually does play a huge part in things like getting jobs or being profiled by the police, but that is not what this book is about. This book is about high school and in high school literally no one cares what your name is, as long as they have something to call you by. Maybe this is because white people and their names were a minority in my high school, but I go to a college that is 60% white people and I still don't think having a slightly different name is going to stop you from climbing the social ladder.

Wow okay I just realized that's a huge wall of text about how Andrea Portes cannot write high school realistically so I'm going to stop that and switch gears. I will say that this review might sound really nitpicky, but if you look at the bigger picture, it's that there are so many little things wrong that add up and just make this book a little more than slightly uncomfortable to read. Anyway, let's talk about characters and the dimensions they possess (or don't) woo! I feel like her characters are so two-dimensional. Her dad only cares about her grades and only calls to make sure she still has straight A's. Her mother is kind and listens to all her problems and never gets mad, even when she steals over a thousand dollars in cash. Her stepfather eats a lot and grunts a little. None of these characters have depth. Her sisters don't speak ever and just glare at her. Why do they hate her so much? She seems to just mind her own business at home. A boy came to her door and they glared nonstop and Anika's internal monologue let us know that they would probably murder her. Why? I don't know. Are they jealous? Do they want Anika's cute boy for themselves? Why do they care so much about that and so little about her the rest of the time? I wish I could tell you. They show some compassion at the end, but honestly if they didn't in that situation, I'd be a little concerned. Even the main characters are flat. Becky is queen and she's awful and rude and no one knows why. Shelli is kindof dumb but still sweet and I like her better than Anika to be honest. Speaking of Shelli, the first words Anika says about her are negative, and then she starts gushing about how they're best friends. At first I wasn't sure if they were only talking about of social obligation but no, Anika just thinks she's better than Shelli but chooses to love her regardless of this. Maybe because she's a pretty decent person. Maybe she wants makeup tips. Who really knows?

This book has two instaloves to form a very unstable triangle and neither of them make sense. Like, this guy out of nowhere likes her and okay, I guess he knows her from school and thought she was cute or cool or whatever, but the second guy literally sees her once and can't let it go, even though she's blacked out for half that interaction. I think Logan isn't supposed to be instalove, because he got to know her on their rides home from school, but it's so rushed that it really does feel like he's saying he loves her way too soon. And of course, these bad boys have bad sides and I usually can pick sides in a love triangle easily, but this time I found myself unable to choose, not because I loved them both, but because I wasn't invested enough to care.

So what did I like? Well, once you get past certain aspects of the voice, Andrea Portes's writing itself isn't actually bad. I mean, a lot of it just reads like straightforward internal monologue, but there are a few gems in there that I like. Also, she tried to make the voice really sarcastic and biting and I don't think she pulled that off like she intended but I didn't think it was awful and even though Anika was really overdramatic and occasionally whiny, I didn't mind the parts where she tried to add in the sarcastic tone. Also, I like some of the descriptions a lot, like in the beginning when Anika describes herself:

"I bet you think I have dark hair and dark eyes and look like I listen to the Cure but you're wrong. On the outside I look like vanilla pudding so nobody knows that on the inside I am spider soup.
Unless they look closer.
For instance...Yes, there is blonde hair, blue eyes, pale skin. That is true. But, you see...everybody around here has a button nose and I have more of n ode that looks like it got lopped off by a meat cleaver. There's another thing too, I have a boy jaw, like a square jaw, and cheekbones you could cut yourself on. Also, there are dark purple circles around my eyes that might be adorable if I was a raccoon."

I personally found that a very amusing description and pretty effective in telling us what she looks like in an unconventional manner. I also like the idea of her  comparing her insides to spider soup, or spider stew, or spider whatever else she uses because she comes back to that idea a lot. I think it's a unique metaphor.

However, what I don't like about it is that even though throughout the whole book Anika mentions how she's spider soup and how she's dark on the inside and is all twisted up, she really isn't at all. She gives literally no examples as to how she could be as rotten on the inside as she says she is. Are we just supposed to go along with it? She seems perfectly normal to me. Like, the worst thing she did was steal money from her terrible boss, but she had a moral turnaround about that too. Otherwise, she's as normal as it gets. Definitely not the misfit the title must be referring to. She has popular friends and two cute guys chasing after her and nothing is really all that dark about her.

Okay,  I think I might have rambled a lot more than I intended to and I definitely have realized, now that I see all that I've written, that the one positive thing I wrote about isn't enough to make this a book I'd recommend to other people. It was a very quick read and mildly entertaining but definitely not as good as I wanted it to be. I'm disappointed. That beautiful cover and title could have held so much more.

- Noor

Have you ever misjudged a book by its cover?
Let us know in the comments!

Review - Death Comes to Pemberley - P.D. James

Death Comes to Pemberley
P.D. James
Series: N/A
Genre: Mystery, British Lit
Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
Word Rating: Hideous
On Goodreads

If you guys should know one thing about me, it's how much I LOVE Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. I fell in love with the Great Illustrated Classics version of it when I was in fourth grade and fell even more in love with the original in eighth. It is my pick-me-up book when I am feeling down. I relish in the classiness that is Darcy and the intelligence that is Elizabeth. I have read fanfiction about Lizzie and Darcy, all of which I loved. Unfortunately, that fanfiction was better than this novel.

This book was a classic Wegmans buy. It stood out to me on the shelves, looking like a diamond in the rough. The blurb of the book said that the story begins with Lydia's husband, George Wickham being murdered. I was immediately enticed. I HATED Wickham when I read P&P - he is the kind of character that makes you cringe whenever he appears.

However, the book starts out more with an introduction into Pride and Prejudice - so much so that it is a basic regurgitation of it. But, it was a poor regurgitation, making it all the worse. Although, I guess it was expected - P.D. James began the novel with an apology to Jane Austen. I think Jane Austen not only deserves this apology, but a retraction of the book - she is probably rolling around in her grave right now.

More than half the book is "Oh, where did we meet?" or "Tell me how we came into contact again..." - Like okay. I understand you need to give some background to the characters, but do you need to sound like a high school reunion scene? I think not, James. Not only are these characters awkward, they all fall flat. Darcy's charm and Lizzie's wit are completely lost - everyone is a one dimensional static character. My heart sobs at the very thought of what Austen might say if she saw her characters marred like this.

After this introduction stuff ends (it lasts a long time) we finally uncover the plot (or lack thereof) in the story. There's a dead body and a confession and basically the question is now, what happened? (I KNOW. IT'S A SHOCKING QUESTION. YOU WOULD'NT EXPECT IT FROM A MURDER MYSTERY). Not even going to sugarcoat this, THERE WAS NO MYSTERY HERE. There was no discovery of information. Rather, it was just handed over "Did you know ____?" or "As you know _____..." Like what. No. This is not okay. Who let this woman publish this book? Ugh. As a die hard mystery fan, I am displeased. Make my misery stop.

This book even gets a lower rating than Wait for You, by J Lynn, because at least she didn't promise me the appearance of my favorite characters and not deliver.

This was awful. Do yourself a favor, and stick to the original Pride and Prejudice, even though Wickham gets to live in that one.

- Amrutha

What are your favorite fanfic books?

Let us know in the comments!

Review: Confessions of a So-Called Middle Child - Maria T. Lennon

Confessions of a So-Called Middle Child
Maria T. Lennon
Series: N/A
Genre: Children's Fiction
Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
Word Rating: Sobbing
On Goodreads

When Kiersten gave this to me, she quoted the woman who gave it to her. “In my opinion, [Maria T. Lennon] is the next Judy Blume.” NO. WRONG. As a faithful Judy Blume fan from now until the end of time, I am so upset that anyone would have the audacity to compare Lennon to Blume. This was endlessly boring, formulaic, and cringe worthy. (As a note, I know that as a teenager it might seem that I’ve just grown out of the children’s genre, but I still wholeheartedly enjoy a good kids book).

The plot of the story is dried out and over told – there’s a girl who makes a mistake. To pay for the mistake, she has to start over in a new place. With some pitiful effort, she transforms miraculously. Woo. The dry nature of the book is killing me. The main character, Charlie, is annoying, and quite frankly, I hated her. As someone who is really obnoxious herself, I can tell you for a fact that Charlie is so terrible that not even I can stand her. She is a bully who needs to see the wrongs in her ways, and honestly, it has nothing to do with being a “middle child.” While Lennon tried to use her middle-child-ness as an excuse for her bad attitude, nothing allowed for the way Charlie behaved. Plus the pranks that she pulled were crazy even for college kids – no one in middle school could pull off something like that.

Crazy plot holes, huh? I’d let you know more of the plot holes, but I’d be giving away the only semi-interesting part of a terrible book. But be forewarned, there’s a lot of stuff that doesn’t quite add up. Let’s go back to the characters though. Lennon tries to portray Charlie as a misunderstood fashionista who can work miracles with computers and is at a bad place in her life. As we all know too well, middle school is often worse than it seems, and the kids that are like Charlie never end up reforming. Honestly, for this kind of character to work in a story, she has to appeal to the audience, and she didn’t appeal to me.

Don’t forget about Charlie’s family. Her family is apparently perfect, and none of them change at all: totally static. Her mom forces her to be a good person and read while also supporting her, and her Dad is an architect who is working on Harry Houdini’s mansion (which is both relevant and irrelevant information in the book because Lennon cannot form a cohesive plot as it seems). Her little brother is adorable and her elder sister is kind and charitable, but also popular despite her lack of fashion sense which is so important to Charlie. (Her family seems too good to be true, even for a story about a middle child).

And what about the other characters? Also completely static. There’s Trixie, your typical mean girl, and Babs, her follower. And then there’s Marta, who is the wounded bird in this story. Honestly, she’s a huge plot hole for me – with her knowledge of ehm –certain things- ehm (because of her mother). Like, if you see your mom attain something you want, would you or would you not be careful to do things similarly to her? Yes right? UGH. Don’t understand you Marta, although your home situation helps (but not enough to clarify the plot hole).

I’ll tell you about one more gap in the plot before stopping, because then we will get into spoilers (if we can even say that, this is a super routine book with maybe two plot twists in it the whole way and it’s honestly not anything special). Okay, so I told you that Charlie loves computers. Did I also tell you her parents allow her to webcam with some random Indian guy named Jai who lives in Mumbai? Well. She does. And on top of that, every time there’s something questionable happening in the story, Charlie (with the help of Jai) hacks into a secure database, and forges a document of some sort. Like she’s 12. That is not possible. I know 12 year olds in real life, and having been 12 at some recent point in time, I can personally tell you that any 12 year old that can create a fake H1 Visa is so gifted with computers that they need to graduate high school early and just move to college. Charlie, is not this 12 year old.

I don’t want to complain about her any longer but I’ll end it with this. Charlie is vapid, and shallow, and frankly, too obnoxious for her own good. At least she wasn’t TOTALLY static throughout the book, albeit, she only changes begrudgingly.

All in all, this was not a good book. Sorry Maria Lennon, but you struck out with me. This copy of my book was an ARC provided by BEA 2013, and honestly, they can have it back if they wanted. Unfortunately, I will not be recommending this to anyone.

- Amrutha

Do you believe in middle-child syndrome?

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