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crofteereader 's review for:
My Dearest Darkest
by Kayla Cottingham
I think this book tried to do too many things without really going all the way.
I liked Selena’s character a lot and she felt like the driving force of the story even though Finch should have been at the center. Selena started out as the stereotypical high school mean girl, and I liked that we really dug into her character to see what lay beneath. The balance of social pressures, rumors, her own interests, toxic relationships, and identity made her feel like a very complex and real character.
A lot of the supernatural aspects came up in the book solely because of timing and not because of a character- or plot-driven reason (or at least that’s how it read to me). We don’t see lasting consequences for two out of three of the characters for whom supernatural things happen, and it felt like a major oversight. Plus there’s a huge chunk in the middle where the supernatural is entirely incidental as we sidebar into normal teenager drama, but then the ending is so rapid fire that it felt like an entirely different book. The balance was just off there.
Overall, it was okay. I liked bits and pieces of it - enough that I would probably read another book by the author - but I didn’t love it.
{Thank you SourceBooks for the complementary copy in exchange for my review; all thoughts are my own}
I liked Selena’s character a lot and she felt like the driving force of the story even though Finch should have been at the center. Selena started out as the stereotypical high school mean girl, and I liked that we really dug into her character to see what lay beneath. The balance of social pressures, rumors, her own interests, toxic relationships, and identity made her feel like a very complex and real character.
A lot of the supernatural aspects came up in the book solely because of timing and not because of a character- or plot-driven reason (or at least that’s how it read to me). We don’t see lasting consequences for two out of three of the characters for whom supernatural things happen, and it felt like a major oversight. Plus there’s a huge chunk in the middle where the supernatural is entirely incidental as we sidebar into normal teenager drama, but then the ending is so rapid fire that it felt like an entirely different book. The balance was just off there.
Overall, it was okay. I liked bits and pieces of it - enough that I would probably read another book by the author - but I didn’t love it.
{Thank you SourceBooks for the complementary copy in exchange for my review; all thoughts are my own}