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A review by graecoltraine
Marked by P.C. Cast, Kristin Cast
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
1.0
Picked this up because I was gifted the entire series by a friend of a friend. I think I must have offended her or something. It wasn't the worst book I've ever read, by any means, but the main character is so overtly unpleasant and the book is written in first person, so you can't escape just how full of hatred she is for... everyone. Every single person who is not exactly what she wants them to be has something wrong with them. Zoey's voice is an avenue for judgement of basically everyone in existence, including people that, in-narration, she claims to love. Slur count nears the double-digits--I will give the authors the benefit of the doubt here in that this was published in 2007, but I really expected less slurs coming from a book that also uses the word "poopie" repeatedly and unapologetically.
The pacing is horrendous. The entire book takes place over the course of 4-5-ish days. In that time,Zoey, the main character, gets Pointed At, making her a vampire vampyre, runs away from home so she doesn't die of being a vampyre, has a mystic Cherokee vision of the Greek goddess Nyx who tells her she's the Specialest girl, settles in at school where she doesn't fit in because her cool Tattoo That Makes You Hot And/Or Just Straight Up Kills You, makes an entire friend group (but remember she doesn't fit in), gets invited to join the super exclusive Vampyre Sorority fulls of unpleasant people, joins the Vampyre Sorority, finds time to make out with a guy and get into relationship drama with a new guy who's totally hot and so glad she finally said yes to going out with him (they met the day before this), and gets named President of the Vampyre Sorority™ .
The characters are teenagers. This is interesting, because they are somehow both realistic to sixteen-year-olds while also being absolute caricatures of what out-of-touch adults think teenagers are like. I think this disconnect comes from the book being co-authored: one author more or less Getting teenagers and the other being Absolutely Certain she Gets teenagers.
I have a talent for turning off my brain and letting myself enjoy things that are objectively bad. There's bad and fun, good and fun, bad and not fun, and good and not fun. I am firmly placing this in the category of bad and not fun--compare Fourth Wing, a book I consider bad and fun. The difference, I think, comes from a main character who isn't a constant negative voice at war with the world--Fourth Wing's main character isn't all sunshine and rainbows, but at least every other word in her narration and out of her mouth isn't casting judgement on some group or another. Zoey hates jocks, nerds, goths (and worse, emos), people who wear jeans I think?, video games (to which she literally says ew, gross at the thought of someone playing them), women (not overtly, but her internal monologue is comprised of a decent percentage of just being misogynistic in some form or another), fat people, skinny people, people withboobs boobies, sluts, whores, and hos, and just about everything else you can think of EXCEPT gay people (which is a quieter, less overt sort of judgement), Black people (of which there are two in the book, both described exclusively as different types of coffee), and herself. Oddly, she also hates religious people (implying every religious person [possibly cult members, but it's difficult to tell with a narrator like Zoey] is fat [if a woman] or a pedophile [if a man]) while having the most overtly Christian voice I've run into in a while. I've heard just about every self-righteous lecture she gave to the poor misinformed side characters come out of the mouth of the same people who try to convince you to come to their church if you [checks notes] are a girl with short hair in their vicinity because they want to "save" you, down to the incredibly unfortunate vocabulary (see "poopie", "boobie", etc.).
If you are better at turning off your brain and letting this wash over you than I am, this is probably an alright read. I, for one, enjoyed the part where I closed the book most of all.
The pacing is horrendous. The entire book takes place over the course of 4-5-ish days. In that time,
The characters are teenagers. This is interesting, because they are somehow both realistic to sixteen-year-olds while also being absolute caricatures of what out-of-touch adults think teenagers are like. I think this disconnect comes from the book being co-authored: one author more or less Getting teenagers and the other being Absolutely Certain she Gets teenagers.
I have a talent for turning off my brain and letting myself enjoy things that are objectively bad. There's bad and fun, good and fun, bad and not fun, and good and not fun. I am firmly placing this in the category of bad and not fun--compare Fourth Wing, a book I consider bad and fun. The difference, I think, comes from a main character who isn't a constant negative voice at war with the world--Fourth Wing's main character isn't all sunshine and rainbows, but at least every other word in her narration and out of her mouth isn't casting judgement on some group or another. Zoey hates jocks, nerds, goths (and worse, emos), people who wear jeans I think?, video games (to which she literally says ew, gross at the thought of someone playing them), women (not overtly, but her internal monologue is comprised of a decent percentage of just being misogynistic in some form or another), fat people, skinny people, people with
If you are better at turning off your brain and letting this wash over you than I am, this is probably an alright read. I, for one, enjoyed the part where I closed the book most of all.