TOP TEN BOOKS THAT WERE TOTALLY DECEIVING
Sisterhood Everlasting by Ann Brashares. I’d been taught from the Traveling Pants series that there were always happy resolutions for the girls. But this was not the case at all in its conclusion. It was very unsettling.
The Duff by Kody Keplinger. The concept of the Duff barely made a lasting appearance in the story. I felt cheated into reading a cliched teen romance.
Love Story by Jennifer Echols. I’m not sure this counts as an instance of deceit, but, c’mon. That ending? What’s up with THAT?
The Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor. Going by the cover alone, I expected some sort of masquerade. It just led my mind in a different direction entirely. Thankfully the story ended up being TOTALLY AWESOME.
Dash and Lily’s Book of Dares by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan. I thought this would be a cutesy winter read, but it ended up being chaotic and the Book of Dares was left by the wayside maybe halfway through. The title was misleading.
Being Friends with Boys by Terra Elan McVoy. The cover is a coffee cup with a heart in its foam. Yet, the story is about a spunky tomboy being in a band. What’s up with that?
The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight by Jennifer E. Smith. I was expecting a cute, romantic read focusing on a boyfriend/girlfriend relationship. Instead the story revolves around the protagonist and her relationship with her father – which is okay, just not what the summary sold me.
The Summer I Turned Pretty by Jenny Han. I expected a cute, beach read. Instead the story is very serious (and, consequently, boring). It didn’t live up to its description.
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*I know there’s only 8, but this post decided to eat itself before posting, and I had to recreate it from memory in a shorter amount of time.
My rating: 3 stars.
I went into the story loving the concept of characters in college. HUGE plus. Also, in a creative writing class, writing about one another? BIGGER plus! Awesome idea. And Erin’s and Hunter’s stories were actually enjoyable to read. They didn’t feel like intrusions to the overall story. And yet, sometimes I felt that they were lacking… or not present enough. I didn’t like that the narration would mention they’d written several more stories over the passing weeks, but as a reader I never got to read them. Since they were such a key aspect beforehand, I figured they’d be prominent throughout. This is not the case.
As for the characters, Erin and Hunter have that electric dynamic – hating but loving, flirty but zingy. It’s good and all, but at times it’s also confusing. I had a hard time deciphering what actions were “true” and which were not; going by Erin’s narration, I just couldn’t tell, and it seemed neither could she. This prevented me from ever forming an attachment to the idea of them as a couple. I couldn’t trust Hunter, so I wasn’t invested in their relationship as much as I should/could have been.
Another big big BIG component of the book is the background info. There’s a lot of it that comes into play. But… it’s all so fuzzy. You never get the FULL stories. Often I was like, Well what happened next?! But I never found out. You’re just given the same information over and over. The problem is that their past is so vital to the present, so to not have all of the info makes it seem like an unsolved mystery. This constantly nagged at me. I kept waiting for explanations and meetings that I knew had to happen, yet didn’t.
Now for the biggest issue, and the reason why I couldn’t rate this higher: THE ENDING. Is there even an ending? I’m not so sure. I got to the last page and literally freaked out, thinking my copy was missing an entire last chunk of the story. But no. Upon checking page counts and chapters and everything, I found that my copy is indeed correct. Let me just say that I’ve never had a book elicit such a reaction from me; I’ve never been so surprised at such an abrupt ending. The story comes to no conclusion! Okay… it comes to a miniature closure/resolution/THING. But it’s not nearly satisfying enough to be considered an actual ending.
All I can say is read and see for yourself. Really, it’s a good, entertaining story. It just left me puzzled and frustrated.
