Lets start with what I liked: The Cover.
Now for the criticism.
Quality of the writing is standard, though I do feel that the main protagonist, Lucy was a little under-developed and two dimensional at times. I feel like her mother and father, two secondary characters, actually had more personality than the main protagonist! Not a good start. Accompanying this, there was one or two typos. The characters and story's concept is nothing if not typical of YA reads. Some aspects within the story line were not thought out by the author, and made little sense. When she makes a fresh start at a new school but somehow everyone in school; none of whom know her; some how know of the details of her personal life. How? This is unexplained and had me confused. Ooh, and then look who pops up again. Jude of course. T-Y-P-I-C-A-L.
Straight away within the first 15% of the story, I knew what I was going to rate it. What really aggravated me was the sheer amount of cliches and what I like to call 'happy coincidences' which made some of the plot a little too obvious and predictable, and also took away the realism from the story. I did take into consideration that coincidences are an important element commonly required to form the basis of the plot and draw the character together, and that they do happen often in our every day lives, but these were ridiculous.
The worst one was when it reads that Jude and Lucy were both named by songs by The Beatles, and that both of their parents were huge Beatles fans. Gahhh. I sat up on my bed and screamed "Really????".
Do you want another example? Well, when they were at a club...A CLUB, for COLLEGE TEENS! The music playing was 'HEY JUDE' by the goddamn BEATLES!!! What the f***? What sort of nightclub plays the Beatles for Bejus' sake?
Sawyer was a character written very unrealistically. No one is like that! Oh god. So were those guys that randomly decided to set her on fire in the middle of the night. That scene had absolutely no relevance. Come on now Williams. As for the "priends" and rest of the student body, I really hope that all American teenagers and students aren't as superficial and shallow as the ones in this story. God help them if they are.
What made me change my mind from rating this with 1*, despite all of the cringe worthy cliches, was the emotional effect that some of the scenes had on me. Particularly within the second last revelation which had a major twist on the story. The one where they discover each other's pasts and how they interlock with each other, complicating things further more. That additionally was a bit too far fetched but was also shocking and impacting. My automatic emotional response was to cry for the misfortunes bestowed on Lucy's family with the tragic death of her brother.
I did enjoy reading a little bit of this story, I'll admit, but this combined with the things I heavily disliked, has concluded to my rating being 2*. I'm not actually sure why I bought it after reading the sample on my Kindle. I think it was because of the high ratings given by my goodreads friends. And I like the cover.
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