2.5
Ok. this was my second attempt at reading this book. The first was when I got it as an e-ARC before it came out and I read 15% and could not take it any more.
This time read it as a buddyread with my 2Neuron girls and I wanted to finish it. But this was not the book for me (unlike my reading buddies who loved it). I just felt annoyed the entire time reading it. and then the final straw – the epilogue! WHO WRITES AN EPILOGUE THAT IS 10% OF ALL THE PAGES OF THE BOOK?
I’ll tell you who, a person who can’t decide on the end she wants her book to have!
**SPOILER***
Williams obviously was in two minds when it came to the end. She wanted a HEA for them, or at least HFN but the “realness” of the situation demanded they suffer some more. *oh the angst!*
Williams decided that her two main characters would not get together in the end. He realizes he needs to work on himself, and she realizes she needs to work on her book. Good, I respect that choice… but wait! then we get the epilogue, told in snippets of text messages, phone conversations and a scene or two… they do get together because after a month they are finally ready to be together. The ONE MONTH was enough for him to solve his issues and put himself together….
And that is where we get to my main issue with this book: the timeline. As teenagers, Eva and Shane spend like 5 days together, on a self-destructive bender and that’s that. Now as adults they also spend less than a week together and a butload of things happen to them and people around them. The need to make it 7days in June was what made this book bad. There was no valid reason to do it this way. She had an option to make it a normal book. But no, Williams chose not to do that. But then she has issues
– it takes less than 2 days for Eva’s kid to be angry at her mum for having a boyfriend, meet Shane, start liking him, finish her artwork, submit it to school competition, win the competition, win a scholarship thing, and leave for California. Really? Yeah
– the headmaster being in a bind, in a hurry to find a new English teacher when it’s 2 days before the end of the school when (according to how long the kid will be in California) she has almost 3 months till new school year.
– the epilogue where Shane gets better in less than a month, when it didn’t happen for him for 12 years…
Oh and the kid is annoying.
And one final example of superficial writing. Eva wins a prize for her book, 14th instalment of her fantasy series. I’m gonna ignore the fact that the 14th book is her first one to get an award, but the person reading out the win says “Eva Mercy! For Cursed, Book Fourteen!”
She couldn’t be bothered to come up with a title for the book! REALLY? really?
To conclude, maybe I should have left it at DNF and not picked it back up. But I am a glutton for punishment.
Maybe my next book will be better.
Anatomy of Reading 