Genuine Fraud (Mini ARC Review)

Genuine Fraud by E. Lockhart
Genre: Young Adult/Suspense
Page Length: 272 pages
Format: ARC (received from Penguin/First In Line, from my B-Fest trivia win last summer)
Publisher: Delacorte Press
Publication Date: September 5, 2017

About Genuine Fraud (via Goodreads):

The story of a young woman whose diabolical smarts are her ticket into a charmed life. But how many times can someone reinvent themselves? You be the judge.

Imogen is a runaway heiress, an orphan, a cook, and a cheat.

Jule is a fighter, a social chameleon, and an athlete.

An intense friendship. A disappearance. A murder, or maybe two.

A bad romance, or maybe three.

Blunt objects, disguises, blood, and chocolate. The American dream, superheroes, spies, and villains.

A girl who refuses to give people what they want from her.

A girl who refuses to be the person she once was.

To get straight to the point, I was not a big fan of this book. The overall concept of the novel was definitely intriguing and entertaining (and had great potential), but it fell short for me. While the reverse chronological storytelling was an interesting addition to the novel, the plot and characters did not meet my expectations.

The plot was very character-driven, yet I could not connect to any of the characters at all. While I understand the need for mystery regarding the characters, the lack of details made them seem flat instead of appearing intriguing or mysterious.

While it was fascinating to see how the hero origin story concept was incorporated and completely twisted by the main character, it wasn't enough. It was merely scattered throughout the novel and never fully acknowledged or fleshed out. The characters lacked personality, and the main character's motivation was never clear. Good heroes and antiheroes need strong origin stories, yet this one lacked substance and a solid foundation.

I don't want to go into the details of the plot (although I thought the synopsis made the chain of events a bit too obvious), but it was definitely an interesting story. I will say that it felt like it would have worked better for the screen than a novel though. I wouldn't discourage people from reading it since it was still a decent read, but it didn't completely work for me.

My rating: 2.5 stars

The Love Interest (Review)

The Love Interest by Cale Dietrich
Genre: Young Adult/Contemporary/LGBTQIA+
Format: Hardcover
Page Length: 384 pages
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Publication Date: July 25, 2017

About The Love Interest (via Goodreads):

There is a secret organization that cultivates teenage spies. The agents are called Love Interests because getting close to people destined for great power means getting valuable secrets.

Caden is a Nice: the boy next door, sculpted to physical perfection. Dylan is a Bad: the brooding, dark-souled guy who is dangerously handsome. The girl they are competing for is important to the organization, and each boy will pursue her. Will she choose the Nice or the Bad?

Both Caden and Dylan are living in the outside world for the first time. They are well-trained and at the top of their games. They have to be—whoever the girl doesn’t choose will die.

What the boys don’t expect are feelings that are outside of their training. Feelings that could kill them both.

One of the things that I look for in a great book is an overall message and meaning behind the narrative.  While I love books that I can consume for fun wholeheartedly, I love books that give commentary on issues and strive to convey something to the greater world.  It’s why one of my favorite genres is satire, and why I will defend Kill The Boy Band to the grave.  So when I heard about Cale Dietrich’s The Love Interest, I was so excited to hear his take on tired YA tropes and novel cliches.

Most of his plays strike at the paranormal novels from around 2012, like Fallen and Hush, Hush (*shivers in disgust*) or really any YA novel published after Twilight and before, let’s say, 2015, with a heterosexual romance.  And in the first few chapters, Dietrich does this very well - like, at the level of a 4 star book.  He’s a master at worldbuilding, and he establishes clear views of the world inside and outside the LIC.  He tackles topics such as male self-consciousness and comments on the love interest’s true role in a story, showing how unrealistic and paper-thin they need to be constructed to serve their greater narrative.

But as soon as Caden meets Juliet, everything falls apart - his plans, himself, and this darn book.  Dietrich seems to juggle way too much throughout the entire story between Caden’s inner thoughts and the storylines of literally everyone else involved.  It suffered a massive case of identity crisis, and couldn’t recover itself to match the quality from the first few chapters.

First of all, Caden is an annoying little turd.  I couldn’t sympathize with his struggles but I still felt for him as a person.  Additionally, in the grand scope of things he does some pretty stupid stuff.  The book’s biggest problem is that Dietrich writes the story from Caden’s point of view the entire time, and his thoughts and prose at times seemed to be overwhelming, heavy, and too dramatic.  I personally think it would have been better to have an alternating perspective from both Caden and Dylan to capitalize on the great world-building skills Dietrich had shown in the LIC.

To add on that point, all the characters were passable at most.  Dylan and Juliet were both interesting characters that I would have preferred to hear from a bit more.  Trevor and Natalie were the most useless characters in this entire novel.  Note: I had to look through reviews on Goodreads to find their names, if that says anything.  They were poorly written and unnecessary, and ultimately serve the story more than themselves.  Frankly, Trevor and Natalie were utilized in very cliche ways (I won’t say further for spoiler reasons), which is sad because this is exactly what the author is trying to avoid doing.  Also, Caden’s coach (I think her name is Kaycee, but when I tried to look through review’s again I couldn’t find anything, which should also say lots of things) was honestly really annoying.  And for that matter their whole communication process was just so plain unrealistic that it was jarring.

The third act is just such a colossal mess I kinda felt secondhand embarrassment.  It felt like a completely different novel.  The best that I can compare how I felt is when I watched Kingsman: The Secret Service after their church scene; I was ON BOARD but my parents felt like the movie took a complete 180 degree turn.  But in this case, I was my parents.  

By far the biggest problem with this book is that it really didn’t know what it wanted to be.  It was very well-written but just all over the place.  It tried to be 10% of a satire, which it tossed out the window fairly quickly; a sexy thriller, which wasn’t often steamy but those moments were SO CHARGED that it seemed like there was TOO MUCH of it; and, most importantly, just a really good, unique, original LGBT love story, where it ended up being a cliche tale falling into the same traps it was originally criticizing.

I’d like to think that The Love Interest tried really hard not to be cliche, but that’s where it fails the most.  It had an interesting concept but sadly couldn’t really deliver, falling back into the old habits of YA novels of past.

My Rating: 2.5 stars

Carry On (Review) ~ Things Left Unsaid

Carry On by Rainbow Rowell
Genre: Young Adult/Fantasy
Page Length: 522 pages
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin

About Carry On (via Goodreads):

Simon Snow is the worst chosen one who’s ever been chosen.

That’s what his roommate, Baz, says. And Baz might be evil and a vampire and a complete git, but he’s probably right.

Half the time, Simon can’t even make his wand work, and the other half, he sets something on fire. His mentor’s avoiding him, his girlfriend broke up with him, and there’s a magic-eating monster running around wearing Simon’s face. Baz would be having a field day with all this, if he were here—it’s their last year at the Watford School of Magicks, and Simon’s infuriating nemesis didn’t even bother to show up.

Carry On is a ghost story, a love story, a mystery and a melodrama. It has just as much kissing and talking as you’d expect from a Rainbow Rowell story—but far, far more monsters.

Okay, so to be honest, I wasn't planning on writing a review for this book at all. However, I realized that I had too many thoughts about this book that I needed to share so I would stop thinking about it all the time. Horrible reasoning to write a review, I know. I'm sorry. I'm just so conflicted about this book and need to pour out all my thoughts and feelings.

First of all, it's a Rainbow Rowell book. Which means that I was going to love it, even though I didn't like it at the same time (which somehow happened with this book, even though it doesn't make any sense). So let's talk about the good first.

1) The romance *heart eyes* My gosh, I absolutely ADORED the romance. Simon and Baz were amazing together. That is all.

2) The writing style. I love Rainbow Rowell's writing. She's a brilliant writer.

3) Baz himself. Such a fantastic character. He's just so precious and I loved him to death. Honestly, if he were real, this would be me if/when I met him *holds him close and doesn't let him go*

4) Rainbow Rowell had me feeling all the feels for these characters. (Carry On is one of my good friends' favorite books, and she can attest to my flailing when new things were revealed, and characters came back into the story, and when people made horrible decisions, etc etc.)

5) It was an incredibly fun book to read, despite all it's flaws. 5/5 stars for sheer entertainment purposes, but there were still tons of issues I had with it.

Now for the negatives.

1) While I enjoyed the writing style, I also didn't think it was the best choice for fantasy. It felt like exactly what it was, a Rainbow Rowell book. What does this mean, you ask? By this, I mean it felt too much like a contemporary. I do love Rainbow Rowell as a contemporary novelist (she's one of my favorites!), and I was really interested to see what she'd do with a fantasy novel. However, I was kind of disappointed. Fantasy requires extensive world-building, and with that, the story fell flat.

I'm not saying that the magic system and world were bad, per se, it just felt like they were really underdeveloped and rushed. Something about it just wasn't fantasy enough for me. Not to say there can't be all different types on the fantasy spectrum, but based on what she was trying to create, I was expecting a lot more.

2) Onto the plot/pacing. Not only was the world-building rushed, but so was the plot. She crammed 7 or so years of backstory into a single book while somehow speeding through the present plot and the final battle and all that. Even when they were battling, it seemed like there wasn't much going on. It's honestly hard to explain, but Rowell would brush past all the seemingly fantasy-esque parts of the story and all the action. And I said before, I adored Simon and Baz. But their relationship did seem a bit awkward and rushed like the rest of the book, and it seemed to consume way too much of the plot.

3) The secondary characters were kind of boring and predictable. Even the ones that were supposed to be a mystery were easily crackable. I just did not care about them and thought they could have added a lot more to the story, based on what little information Rowell gave about them.

4) There was a lot of hype throughout the book leading to the final battle, and it was probably the most uninteresting and anticlimactic event to ever take place. So maybe there were some bumps in the road to victory, but they were pretty much tiny little speed bumps rather than the mountains young heroes typically need to cross to accomplish their goals. It was rather disappointing, considering how much they seemed to fear the Humdrum.

5) The ending was extremely disappointing. Like the final battle, it seemed so anticlimactic and boring. I was not pleased.

6) I know this book was a spin-off of the world she created in Fangirl, and it was supposed to have huge parallels to that of the Harry Potter world, but I would have liked for it to have been more unique. I liked the concept of the Humdrum and that creative bit, but I feel like there could have been more of a Rainbow Rowell flair to it, even though she did write a wizarding school story.

My Rating: 2.5 stars

The Siren (Review) ~ Not Enthralled by This Siren's Song

The Siren by Kiera Cass
Genre: Young Adult/Fantasy
Page Length: 327 pages
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: HarperTeen

About The Siren (via Goodreads):

Love is a risk worth taking.

Years ago, Kahlen was rescued from drowning by the Ocean. To repay her debt, she has served as a Siren ever since, using her voice to lure countless strangers to their deaths. Though a single word from Kahlen can kill, she can’t resist spending her days on land, watching ordinary people and longing for the day when she will be able to speak and laugh and live freely among them again. 

Kahlen is resigned to finishing her sentence in solitude…until she meets Akinli. Handsome, caring, and kind, Akinli is everything Kahlen ever dreamed of. And though she can’t talk to him, they soon forge a connection neither of them can deny…and Kahlen doesn’t want to.

Falling in love with a human breaks all the Ocean’s rules, and if the Ocean discovers Kahlen’s feelings, she’ll be forced to leave Akinli for good. But for the first time in a lifetime of following the rules, Kahlen is determined to follow her heart.

The Siren was a fun summer read. The premise was interesting, and the execution was decent. However, the storyline was predictable, and the characters were not very fleshed out. I saw next to no character development, and the love was way too instantaneous. A major case of instalove, if you will. And I hate instalove.

Kahlen wasn't a bad main character, but she was far from my favorite. Her relationships were decent with everyone, but it irked me that she spent decades with the Ocean and her "sisters", and chose to mope over a boy she'd only known for a minuscule fraction of that time.

To return to the topic of instalove, their interactions were too brief. There were so few scenes actually had Kahlen and Akinli together, so it was hard for me to root for them when there was so little to root for. I couldn't get a clear sense of their relationship, so I had no motivation to cheer them on when so many other people were hurt in their wake.

The secondary characters were tried-and-true friends to Kahlen and to each other, but I would have liked it if they had a bigger role. The scenes they were in seemed to go by too quickly, and they seemed to play such a tiny role in the story despite their long-standing relationship with Kahlen and the sisterhood.

In addition, I would have loved to learn more about the Ocean. She was a very unique "character" and although she irritated me quite frequently, she was so intriguing and kind of fragile, in a sense. I wish I knew more of the mythology/backstory behind her and the sirens.

All in all, The Siren was a decent and quick read, but there was a lot left to be desired.

My rating: 2 stars