A review by irissel
XVI by Julia Karr

2.0

The premise was interesting and characters and plot had potential, but the potential was never reached because the writing was just BAD. About fifty pages in, something awful happened in Nina's life and I should have felt her pain, but I didn't. A lot of it had to do with the way the author worded things. Sometimes I would think, "If only she had worded this sentence this way, then it would have been so much more impactful." Also, she did something that I've been tirelessly teaching myself not to do: She used had or a contraction thereof WAY too much. She seemed especially fond of the contraction: she'd, I'd, Ginnie'd, it was getting extremely annoying.

Also, Nina seemed to over-react to a lot of things. I didn't understand why she and Sal had that fight. It seemed like it was her just being paranoid and unreasonable. I didn't see any sign that he wanted to be with her only so he could learn more about her father. And I never understood why Nina decided to tell half the world a secret her mother had been keeping for years. It was obvious she only wanted Nina to know.

Ah well, I did finish it. The last fifty or so pages were better than the first two hundred, which is why I gave this book two starts instead of one, but that hardly made up for the clumsy prose and the main character that I couldn't understand half the time. At least, the plot was somewhat unique. I didn't know how it would end so curiosity drove me to keep reading.

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