When Alyson meets Graham Copeland, the new boy next door, she instantly feels like he’s a kindred spirit—shy and awkward like her, someone who has trouble making friends. It’s impossible to resist having a crush on him.
As usual, her sister, Sydney, sees things differently. In Sydney's mind, Graham's odd personality and secretive past scream psychopath, not sweetheart. Her gut is telling her to stay away from him, and to protect a love-struck Alyson from her own naïveté. But despite her instincts, Sydney is surprised to realize that a part of her is drawn to Graham, too.
And the more Sydney gets to know him, the more she realizes just how right—and wrong—she is about everything.
I'm not sure what this book even is.
Now, that is an odd way to start a review and I can only apologise, but frankly I have no idea what this book is. Or should I say, how this book got published.
I want a fantastic psychological thriller, I pick up this book because frankly the blurb has this dark thing about it that makes me thing 'that will fill the void in my life', and instead I get superficial, predictable and absolutely no sense at all. Now, I get what Olson was trying to do and I can only congratulate her on the fantastic idea that she had, but other than that everything was a load of tosh. Ugh.
I don't even know where to start.
First of all, the writing was not too great, I got this image of Olson being this old person trying to write from a young person's perspective, because of the constant references to Sydney's troublemaking tendencies (skateboarding and smoking weed, apparently). But it also feels like some sort of wish fulfilment, wherein Sydney is this troublemaker but she still manages to get these amazing perfect grades and she knows lots of big words and her best friends are like that too and... what?
None of it is even relevant.
And Allison is made out to be this bad character because she's boring and she bakes muffins and she is responsible and she falls in love, and all of those are decent things to do. Why is Sydney a better person? This is the depth of the characters in this book.
Don't even get me started on Graham.
There are so many perspectives in this book and because of this the big twist in the end is made too obvious. I am not a fan of all the switching - especially because all of the characters except the policeman and the emails sounded the same, and foreshadowing is just stupid unless done right. This is not one of those times. Plus, despite the fact that the big twist is so obvious, it also makes no sense, it seems like something tacked on to the end in the final stage of editing to make it a little deeper and a little bit more thrilling.
Cannot formulate words.
No. This book was not for me. I've seen a lot of positive reviews for it, so maybe it is worth checking it out. For me, the only reason I got through this book so quickly was because the % bar was moving so fast. If the book had been much longer it would have been a definite DNF.
Book released 20th January 2015 by Katherine Tegan
Book received from the publisher in exchange for an honest review
