Oh the irony that I got called out for “always liking the books I read” and then I read something awful. Thanks universe. Thanks a lot. (Thanks OBAMA)
Without naming names, this book was pretty awful. It’s the first of a trilogy and as much as I hate leaving a plot unfinished, I don’t think I want to drag myself through another 2 books with these characters. They were terrible.
So the book is urban fantasy – low fantasy so most of the people aren’t “magical” and what magic there is tends to be brushed off and/or explainable. And the concept of the story is engaging. It’s the characters I have a problem with.
The main character is a sixteen year old girl with apparently no friends and not caring about it. This is my primary beef with this book: what sixteen year old is happy when they have no friends? Hell, any age could be (should be?) unhappy when they almost entirely isolated. And yeah, she’s got her mom and the random women who live with her mom….
Ok, it helps to know her mom is a psychic – of course a real one. The women who live with her are also psychic (real ones). These women are basically the only relationships “Jane” (her name in the book is so terrible another character nicknames her Jane…) has. This caused me serious frustration in the book – there is this character who has lived in this tiny speck of a town her whole life, but apparently is friendless. I know I’m ranting. The frustration this caused (in me) is that the character felt like she didn’t “exist” before this story.
The other primary characters, her love interest and his two friends were pretty similar. Well, actually they had more backstory. One of them was abused, one was a seventeen year old rich kid whose parents are loving but apparently don’t care about him (the one time the character met his parents they were decent people – but it’s like they don’t care if their son is literally just running around the world after a mythical legend….)
It was weird. It was awful. I dragged myself through the first book and gratefully sent it back to the library.
Dream by Day 