**Review Contains Spoilers**
I've been on a kick of reading YA Contemporary Fiction lately. I'd had enough Paranormal garbage to last me a while. I've read a few great ones like
Easy and I've read a lot of mediocre ones and I've read some really awful ones. And this one is one of the awful ones. I honestly do not understand how this book has as many 5 star reviews as it does.
I don't even know where to start. First off, the names were ridiculous. I get the whole cutesy "Beatles" theme with Lucy and Jude. But Jude Ryder? Oy. And Sawyer Diamond? Oh brother. I was trying to figure Neal Diamond? Sawyer Brown? Is Taylor a nod to James Taylor?
And there was just SOOO much to dislike about this book. The characters. The unbelievable plot points. THE TOTAL LACK OF ANYTHING MAKING SENSE!!!
Lucy is a walking contradiction. It's like the author couldn't decide what she wanted her to be. Quirky smart girl? Mini skirt wearing party girl? Focused ballet dancer? Rescuer of dogs and damaged guys? Smart aleck that taunts obviously crazy guys??? From the get go she tries the Math book reading girl on the beach. Who then throws herself at some guy and goes so far as to untie her bikini top to get his attention. Most self respecting girls (math book reading or otherwise) wouldn't do this. It's like this girl has this instant infatuation with this guy for no other reason than he's a hot bad boy. In my book, that makes for a pretty weak character. She tells Jude to leave her alone, then gets all upset when he ignores her. *sigh* She is against popularity contests, tries to tell the reader that she isn't into all of that, yet she becomes friends with the most popular clique in the school. And when nominated for Homecoming Queen, accepts the nomination despite her claims of HATING all things like that. Yeah. No sense.
And then Jude's incesscent martyr attitude. That got old REALLY fast. He's violent and a criminal. Nothing makes sense. Yeah, NO high school football coach would pull some random guy to play. And, throwing sense aside, even if he did, that would be a short lived career after getting arrested for stealing a car. Top player or not, I don't know of a high school that would allow that. And the hijacking of the assembly and the graduation ceremony.... So a school with metal detectors all that security doesn't have a security officer that would have escorted Jude out of the assembly?? And the random violence...Getting out of the car to threaten someone for honking when you park your car at a green light? Um, maybe if you're some crazy druggie that would make sense. Throwing a bottle at someone at a football game? UGH. If I ever thought my daughter (or any woman I know) would take in stride the crap that Jude does throughout this book, I would seriously want to shake the living daylights out of them.
The senseless death of the dog in the beginning didn't do much to endear me to the book. Especially when the feeling is that Lucy was far more worried about her hair being gone that the dog BURNING TO DEATH trapped in a kennel. If she'd made more than a passing comment about the dog I would have felt better about her. And after that kind of an incident there's no mention of the guys who did it and what happened to them? No trial? I find that hard to believe. And she sure took that whole incident in stride. She didn't seem overly traumatized by it.
And the parents....oh dear. I liked the dad okay, but the mom was a raging harpy. And I'm skeptical of the Dad keeping that big of a secret from Lucy. Maybe, given his whole "break from reality" thing you could go with it, but it was a stretch.
And what kind of guy allows the girl that he is supposedly madly deeply in love with to date a guy like Sawyer when he, of all people, know what Sawyer is really like????? OMG! There were so many times reading this book that I wanted to just throw the book across the room. Only the fact that it was a digital book and I value my Galaxy Tab kept me from doing it.
This book was like a train wreck. I just had to keep reading, despite everything. I kept hoping it would get better. That things would come together and make some sort of sense. But if anything, it just got more unbelieveable. And the comment from Jude that it should have been Lucy that was killed? I'm sorry, but that pushes beyond the border of "broken bad boy" to just being a raging a-hole. What kind of remark is that, and how could you EVER forgive someone for saying that? Gee, you wish I was dead so you wouldn't have to be even more tormented than you are. That's okay, I know you didn't mean it. NO. Absolutely not. There is not justification for that kind of remark, or pretty much any of his actions throughout the book.
Save yourself the money and time and skip this one.
**It appears that sometime after this review the author re-wrote the book and changed a bunch of stuff. So yeah, this review is on the original version.**
