I picked up this book because the description sounded really awesome. But this book was a complete and total miss for me. I should have added it to my DNF list, but I had so much hope that it was going to pick up.... It didn't.

I don't think I've disliked a book this much since I read Emma. -.-

Reading this book felt like a chore. For the most part, I found myself skim reading because the dialogue was so terrible. The writing itself wasn't very good and it felt super forced. It thought the main character was horrid. She was incredibly self-centered, obnoxious, rude, and insanely quick to fly off the handle. The whiny tone and use of the word "like" in all of the dialogue and some of the main text itself drove me up a wall. Sometimes it seemed like the main character was narrating, but other times it was like there was a more generic narrator. There were so many sentences that were either run-on or something like: "But I. Was not. Crazy." Every time one of those two things popped up, I would just think, "UGH! Stop it."

The storyline itself didn't make much sense. Especially toward the end, where things should have been wrapped up- but I felt like we were left with a sad excuse of an ending. And a confusing one at that. And I mean, the main storyline- if however many kids started getting sick at a school, you know it would be shut down quickly. There was a flu in my school one year where 9 kids were sick and they shut the building down for a deep cleaning.

The only parts that I seemed to enjoy were the bits where Colleen interacted with her family. But even so, I did not understand the way the family treated the youngest sibling. She was seven!! How in the world did they never know where she was or see her when she entered a room?!

There were also bits that were called the "Interlude" that really didn't go with the story at all. And the tone/voice of the whole piece was so weird. I felt like the author wrote those small bits first and then tried to force a "modern" storyline around it, but also tried to make the interlude itself more modern. The storyline of the interlude also took a weird turn toward the end that didn't make any sense to me.

And there was SO much repetition. Example- in the interlude talking about wanting to run to the family barn to hide. Or Colleen hugging people and getting their hair in her mouth. How does that even happen?!

I would not recommend this book. I'm very annoyed with myself that I pushed through.