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beckyyreadss's review against another edition
funny
hopeful
lighthearted
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
I wanted to read this book because I wanted to read more from authors that I've enjoyed in the past. I loved Marissa’s Cinder series and when I saw she was writing a young adult romance book, I was intrigued to see how it would go. Let's just say Marissa has made me hate a character almost as much as Belly from The Summer I Turned Pretty.
This book is based on chronic overachiever Prudence Barnett, and she is always quick to cast judgement on the lazy, rude, and arrogant residents of her coastal town. Her dreams of karmic justice are fulfilled when, after a night out with her friends, she wakes up with the sudden ability to cast instant karma on those around her. Pru giddily make use of the power, punishing everyone from public vandals to mean gossips, but there is one person on whom her powers consistently backfire: Quint Erickson, her slacker of a lab partner. Quint is annoyingly cute and impressively noble, especially when it comes to his work with the rescue centre for local sea animals. When Pru resigns herself to working at the rescue centre for extra credit, she begins to uncover truths about baby otters, environmental upheaval, and romantic crossed signals – not necessarily in that order. Her newfound karmic insights reveal how thin the line is between virtue and vanity, generosity and greed, love and hate.
One of the main issues I had with this book is that Prudence is not a nice person. Like at all. She shouldn’t have this “power” for the instant karma because she deserves the karma and all the shit to come down on her. She is so immature and selfish, and her thoughts were exhausting. I found myself skimming over her thoughts because I was bored and just didn’t need to hear them. I am aware it’s a young adult book, so they aren’t going to act mature or normal, but I was still rolling my eyes throughout the whole book. This was the time where I wanted the physical book instead of reading it on my kindle so that I could physically throw the book at a wall. Quint has a funny way of showing that he liked her, he is constantly belittling her and just throwing random ass accusations at her and just trying to piss her off which makes her more annoying. I’m aware again that it’s a young adult book and it’s like oh he is picking on me, so he likes me, and he told his mum about me, like get better standards. Plus, Quint just instantly accusing her when the whole town was struggling for money instead of building on the trust, they had spent the whole book figuring out just drove me nuts.
I liked the save the animals side and I wanted more from Jude and his crush and whether they got together, and I liked Ari and Ezra and wanted to see more from them. The side characters saved this from being 2 stars.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal cruelty and Animal death
Moderate: Medical trauma, Fatphobia, and Toxic relationship
Minor: Car accident, Death, and Body shaming
reading_something_else's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
funny
hopeful
lighthearted
reflective
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
This book is one of my favorites! The plot is complex enough to keep holding my interest every time I read it, and I love that the characters are so imperfect. It reads like a romcom but covers serious matters too.
Content Warnings
Minor: Body shaming, Car accident, and Animal cruelty
abigailnoack's review
informative
inspiring
lighthearted
medium-paced
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.5
Favourite things:
- I loved the setting of the small beach town as well as the sea animal rescue. I admit I didn’t know a lot about any of the sea animals they help rescue and rehabilitate before reading, but as an animal lover it was definitely interesting. I work very closely with horses, and I’ve always been interested in their rescue as well. The animal rescue brought in a lot of discussions about sustainability and being environmentally friendly and I was just so impressed to see that being discussed in a YA book.
- I really loved Quint’s character and actually preferred him over Prudence. He was much more interesting to me and a nicer character, although at times seemed a little too perfect.
- Prudence and her friends do karaoke and it added a really fun element.
- There’s also some great discussion about body image/self-confidence
Less than favourite things:
- Prudence is a super unlikable character, and from the reviews I’ve read so far, this seems to be the biggest critique. She gets angry and offended at every little thing. She’s just kinda self righteous the whole time, thinking she knows what’s best and handing out karmic punishments accordingly until she finds out later that maybe she doesn’t know the full story behind people’s lives. Especially at the beginning, it really feels like all of Prudence’s flaws are fully on display. I also feel like she didn’t fully realize that there was consequences to her karma powers and just kept using it.
- Also the way her karmic powers work is basically the Arthur fist meme
- This is definitely the weakest cast of characters I’ve read from Marissa Meyer. It’s not fair to compare, but it doesn’t compare at all to the casts of The Lunar Chronicles and Renegades series. Prudence has a twin brother named Jude, and their best friend is Ari. Both of those relationships felt lacking in depth. This book also had the opportunity to do something special with the family relationships, since Jude and Prudence come from a big family, and it kinda just passed on the opportunity, which I find is actually pretty common in Meyer’s books.
- I’m generally not very interested in books that mainly take place in high school. Most of this is during the summer break, but the take off point is focused on a school project
- This is an enemies to lovers romance, and I just didn’t find the enemies part to be very fun or interesting. This is also the type of romance that is about the “getting together” not the “being together” and I always prefer “being together”. There was some weird pacing with the romance that kept me from being fully invested.
- I was disappointed by the resolution in the story and I thought Quint was (view spoiler)
I know I listed way more negative things, but to me, I overall feel more positive about this book. It was entertaining and engaging, despite not being a perfect YA contemporary.
This did end up being a bit of a disappointment, considering that I have loved every Marissa Meyer book up until this one. I guess I this to be similar to my experience of reading dystopian/fantasy books by Tahereh Mafi for several years and then the magical experience of reading A Very Large Expanse of Sea, but alas, it was not.
- I loved the setting of the small beach town as well as the sea animal rescue. I admit I didn’t know a lot about any of the sea animals they help rescue and rehabilitate before reading, but as an animal lover it was definitely interesting. I work very closely with horses, and I’ve always been interested in their rescue as well. The animal rescue brought in a lot of discussions about sustainability and being environmentally friendly and I was just so impressed to see that being discussed in a YA book.
- I really loved Quint’s character and actually preferred him over Prudence. He was much more interesting to me and a nicer character, although at times seemed a little too perfect.
- Prudence and her friends do karaoke and it added a really fun element.
- There’s also some great discussion about body image/self-confidence
Less than favourite things:
- Prudence is a super unlikable character, and from the reviews I’ve read so far, this seems to be the biggest critique. She gets angry and offended at every little thing. She’s just kinda self righteous the whole time, thinking she knows what’s best and handing out karmic punishments accordingly until she finds out later that maybe she doesn’t know the full story behind people’s lives. Especially at the beginning, it really feels like all of Prudence’s flaws are fully on display. I also feel like she didn’t fully realize that there was consequences to her karma powers and just kept using it.
- Also the way her karmic powers work is basically the Arthur fist meme
- This is definitely the weakest cast of characters I’ve read from Marissa Meyer. It’s not fair to compare, but it doesn’t compare at all to the casts of The Lunar Chronicles and Renegades series. Prudence has a twin brother named Jude, and their best friend is Ari. Both of those relationships felt lacking in depth. This book also had the opportunity to do something special with the family relationships, since Jude and Prudence come from a big family, and it kinda just passed on the opportunity, which I find is actually pretty common in Meyer’s books.
- I’m generally not very interested in books that mainly take place in high school. Most of this is during the summer break, but the take off point is focused on a school project
- This is an enemies to lovers romance, and I just didn’t find the enemies part to be very fun or interesting. This is also the type of romance that is about the “getting together” not the “being together” and I always prefer “being together”. There was some weird pacing with the romance that kept me from being fully invested.
- I was disappointed by the resolution in the story and I thought Quint was (view spoiler)
I know I listed way more negative things, but to me, I overall feel more positive about this book. It was entertaining and engaging, despite not being a perfect YA contemporary.
This did end up being a bit of a disappointment, considering that I have loved every Marissa Meyer book up until this one. I guess I this to be similar to my experience of reading dystopian/fantasy books by Tahereh Mafi for several years and then the magical experience of reading A Very Large Expanse of Sea, but alas, it was not.
Content Warnings
Minor: Body shaming
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