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A review by rebeshelton
The Sacrifice of Sunshine Girl by Paige McKenzie
1.0
TLDR; This book sucks.
I literally have no idea what happened to this last book. The series got progressively worse as did the writing. The first book was awesomely scary (if only a tiny bit corny), this last book is all corny and just all-around awful.
Some things I really hated about it:
1. All the reiteration. I get that series do a little of this to catch the readers up from what happened in the previous novel. But I felt like that’s ALL this book was. Sunshine even got to the point where she was repeating things we already knew from THIS book. And is it just me, or were the reader’s supposed to be way smarter than the characters? Or did the authors actually think that their “big reveals” would actually be surprising? Case in point, when But Nolan got all serious and told us, were we supposed to have a “dun, dun, DUN” moment? Because we didn’t. It was dumb. And those “reveals” happened throughout the whole book. I’m just wondering if the characters were slow, or if the readers were supposed to actually be shocked by their “revelations.”
2. What in the world was up with all the definitions given to the reader? Example: “Right after New Years a horde of light spirits almost killed me by sending me into hypothermia (a fancy way of saying I almost froze) and cardiac arrhythmia (a fancy way of saying my heart rate shot through the roof).” That’s just one example. There were handfuls of that lame crap throughout the entire book. Characters going off on completely unrelated tangents about the origins of words. It just didn’t fit or feel right at all. It’s almost as if the author was saying, “Hey I did a bunch of fancy research while writing this book and I want to make sure I show off everything I learned, but I’m not quite sure how to fit it all in.” (Another example because it was throughout the entire book and really annoying, "'Me too. Days, hours, minutes, seconds, milliseconds...and whatever is tinier than milliseconds.' 'That would be a microsecond, which is a millionth of a second, and then a nanosecond, which is a billionth of a second.' 'Yup. Those.'"
I mean, just...what's the freakin' point of this?!)
3. The Nolan/Sunshine/Lucio triangle. Really?! Can we not have one YA book that doesn’t have one? Also, this one is ridiculously awkward because the only person that doesn’t completely suck is Lucio and he’s the Jacob in this situation, so poor him. I think I remember caring about Nolan in the first book, but these last two I couldn't care less about him as a character. There was no development for him at all and the only reason we as readers were supposed to like him was because Sunshine likes him. But that's not enough for me.
4. Sunshine is literally the worst. Probably my least favorite character of all characters of any book ever in the history of books. She’s constantly going against everything Aidan tells her. At what point do you realize that he’s literally been alive for THOUSANDS of years and decide that he probably (most definitely because you’re an idiot Sunshine) knows more than you do after only being alive for 16 years and only being a Luiseach for less than one? She undermines him with everything she does, doesn’t tell him the truth and just all around messes everything up. She’s just the worst. Case in point, that dumb ending. Thankfully (who could have called it?) she got uber lucky but, ugh, all I have to say is she sucks. I wish she would have died for real.
So yeah. Just really hated this book.
I literally have no idea what happened to this last book. The series got progressively worse as did the writing. The first book was awesomely scary (if only a tiny bit corny), this last book is all corny and just all-around awful.
Some things I really hated about it:
1. All the reiteration. I get that series do a little of this to catch the readers up from what happened in the previous novel. But I felt like that’s ALL this book was. Sunshine even got to the point where she was repeating things we already knew from THIS book. And is it just me, or were the reader’s supposed to be way smarter than the characters? Or did the authors actually think that their “big reveals” would actually be surprising? Case in point, when
Spoiler
Lucio found the pictures of the four dead girls. OF COURSE it’s the mysterious Luiseach deaths, DUH!2. What in the world was up with all the definitions given to the reader? Example: “Right after New Years a horde of light spirits almost killed me by sending me into hypothermia (a fancy way of saying I almost froze) and cardiac arrhythmia (a fancy way of saying my heart rate shot through the roof).” That’s just one example. There were handfuls of that lame crap throughout the entire book. Characters going off on completely unrelated tangents about the origins of words. It just didn’t fit or feel right at all. It’s almost as if the author was saying, “Hey I did a bunch of fancy research while writing this book and I want to make sure I show off everything I learned, but I’m not quite sure how to fit it all in.” (Another example because it was throughout the entire book and really annoying, "'Me too. Days, hours, minutes, seconds, milliseconds...and whatever is tinier than milliseconds.' 'That would be a microsecond, which is a millionth of a second, and then a nanosecond, which is a billionth of a second.' 'Yup. Those.'"
I mean, just...what's the freakin' point of this?!)
3. The Nolan/Sunshine/Lucio triangle. Really?! Can we not have one YA book that doesn’t have one? Also, this one is ridiculously awkward because the only person that doesn’t completely suck is Lucio and he’s the Jacob in this situation, so poor him. I think I remember caring about Nolan in the first book, but these last two I couldn't care less about him as a character. There was no development for him at all and the only reason we as readers were supposed to like him was because Sunshine likes him. But that's not enough for me.
4. Sunshine is literally the worst. Probably my least favorite character of all characters of any book ever in the history of books. She’s constantly going against everything Aidan tells her. At what point do you realize that he’s literally been alive for THOUSANDS of years and decide that he probably (most definitely because you’re an idiot Sunshine) knows more than you do after only being alive for 16 years and only being a Luiseach for less than one? She undermines him with everything she does, doesn’t tell him the truth and just all around messes everything up. She’s just the worst. Case in point, that dumb ending. Thankfully (who could have called it?) she got uber lucky but, ugh, all I have to say is she sucks. I wish she would have died for real.
So yeah. Just really hated this book.