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A review by thecurseofchris
Rayne & Delilah's Midnite Matinee by Jeff Zentner
2.0
1.5/5. The tl;dr of this review is that if you read this book, then you can just skip Josie's chapters and only focus on Delia's.
Wow, this book is like a manifestation of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. It's told from the perspective of two teenaged girls, Delia and Josie. Delia's story is honestly pretty good. Though she has her flaws, you can see that her heart is in the right place even if she makes some weird decisions, and in the end she has a worthy payoff for where her character arc goes. If you ripped out all of her chapters and combined it into a book by itself, you'd have an easy 4 out of 5 with the end result.
But Josie's story is written like it's by a completely different author, someone who has no idea how to write engaging, likable, or relatable characters. She's absolutely appalling and easily one of the worst characters I've ever had the misfortune of reading in a book. And the fact that she fawns over some one-dimensional dude after initially dismissing him is so gross, and gives a bad impression to young people who may read it and want to copy that behavior. To make matters worse, Josie's plot leads to an encounter with a "villain" who sounds like they came from that bad Frankie Muniz and Amanda Bynes movie, Big Fat Liar. It was such a departure from the rest of the book that I was cringing at how terrible it was.
Overall it's sad that half this book is pointless dribble. If you must read it, then just go with Delia's chapters and skim over Josie.
Wow, this book is like a manifestation of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. It's told from the perspective of two teenaged girls, Delia and Josie. Delia's story is honestly pretty good. Though she has her flaws, you can see that her heart is in the right place even if she makes some weird decisions, and in the end she has a worthy payoff for where her character arc goes. If you ripped out all of her chapters and combined it into a book by itself, you'd have an easy 4 out of 5 with the end result.
But Josie's story is written like it's by a completely different author, someone who has no idea how to write engaging, likable, or relatable characters. She's absolutely appalling and easily one of the worst characters I've ever had the misfortune of reading in a book. And the fact that she fawns over some one-dimensional dude after initially dismissing him is so gross, and gives a bad impression to young people who may read it and want to copy that behavior. To make matters worse, Josie's plot leads to an encounter with a "villain" who sounds like they came from that bad Frankie Muniz and Amanda Bynes movie, Big Fat Liar. It was such a departure from the rest of the book that I was cringing at how terrible it was.
Overall it's sad that half this book is pointless dribble. If you must read it, then just go with Delia's chapters and skim over Josie.