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jonezeemcgee 's review for:
99 Days
by Katie Cotugno
3.75
"It's not that I don't think they all deserve to hate me...but I'm not the only one they deserve to hate. It feels like such a gross double standard."
I don't mind a book with unlikeable and heavily flawed characters if it is written really well, and if I feel like I took something away from it. I thoroughly enjoyed Cotugno's writing style, and it made breezing through this book easy and enjoyable.
Our protagonist Molly isn't loveable, she isn't the typical YA nerdy girl or a MPDG-she is just a flawed human that makes unbelievably horrible decisions that hurt innocent (Tess, Imogine, and Connie) and not so innocent people around her (The Donnelly siblings, and perhaps her mother). But ignoring the flawed brothers caught in this love triangle and how they throw family away to fight over and win the affections of a girl as if she is a prize from an ongoing competition, and instead only seeing Molly's flawed behavior only highlights the red letter A lesson hidden in this story.
Why is it only the girl who should pay dearly for the crimes when sex and cheating are involved? Why is her character the only one deserving of the reader's contempt? The fact that the book lets us wrestle with this in our own head when reading the protagonist in sticky and terrible situations and while making bad decisions had as much of an effect as reading the horrible ways in which she was treated in the aftermath. The slurs, the graphic sticky notes, her keyed car, toilet papered home and food/drinks tossed were only headed in one direction.
As an adult whose experiences no longer allow the existence of a black and white world, I appreciated this novel. I appreciated how the author handled it, and that at least a few of the flawed characters came to some self-recognization.
Overall, I truly enjoyed this book. It harkened me back to the movie "Inventing the Abbots" which I very much loved. This came very close to a four star read for me.
"It's not that I don't think they all deserve to hate me...but I'm not the only one they deserve to hate. It feels like such a gross double standard."
I don't mind a book with unlikeable and heavily flawed characters if it is written really well, and if I feel like I took something away from it. I thoroughly enjoyed Cotugno's writing style, and it made breezing through this book easy and enjoyable.
Our protagonist Molly isn't loveable, she isn't the typical YA nerdy girl or a MPDG-she is just a flawed human that makes unbelievably horrible decisions that hurt innocent (Tess, Imogine, and Connie) and not so innocent people around her (The Donnelly siblings, and perhaps her mother). But ignoring the flawed brothers caught in this love triangle and how they throw family away to fight over and win the affections of a girl as if she is a prize from an ongoing competition, and instead only seeing Molly's flawed behavior only highlights the red letter A lesson hidden in this story.
Why is it only the girl who should pay dearly for the crimes when sex and cheating are involved? Why is her character the only one deserving of the reader's contempt? The fact that the book lets us wrestle with this in our own head when reading the protagonist in sticky and terrible situations and while making bad decisions had as much of an effect as reading the horrible ways in which she was treated in the aftermath. The slurs, the graphic sticky notes, her keyed car, toilet papered home and food/drinks tossed were only headed in one direction.
As an adult whose experiences no longer allow the existence of a black and white world, I appreciated this novel. I appreciated how the author handled it, and that at least a few of the flawed characters came to some self-recognization.
Overall, I truly enjoyed this book. It harkened me back to the movie "Inventing the Abbots" which I very much loved. This came very close to a four star read for me.