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ninetalevixen 's review for:
My Name Is Rose
by Alexa Kingaard
I received a review copy of this book through Xpresso Book Tours for the blog tour. This does not affect my rating or opinions.
I was intrigued by the opening, since I'm a fan of start at the end and rewind to see how we got here, but unfortunately it was downhill from there.
Rose just irritated me with her constant judgment of everyone else around her: her parents' decision to leave their well-off upbringings to help found a hippie commune, her much prettier "cousin"/best friend Destiny (you know the type — "If I didn't love her like a sister, I would hate her because her life is so easy because she's so beautiful [and mine isn't because I'm not]"), and the other girls she encounters at school. She also spends a lot of time bemoaning her hand-me-downs from Goodwill, and (later on) the unfair choice between having a cell phone and computer and Internet or "moving into a cave ... or a hippie commune" because those are apparently the only options. Throughout the book, her focus is almost exclusively focused on creating a future with Andrew and confirming the identity of her biological father; while it's her prerogative, I found it hard to relate or sympathize because ultimately she doesn't seem to do much to achieve either — she just thinks about them a lot.
I also found the writing itself awkward. The dialogue was really stilted, working to further the plot rather than developing the characters and their relationships; there was little in the way of concrete plot, and the scenes/snippets that were detailed didn't really interest me. The ending was also disappointing; without going into spoilers, I felt that it undermined all the buildup — it wasn't bad in and of itself, just really abrupt. was kind of nice, but also felt arbitrary and appended on to the rest of the narrative.
So all in all, this really wasn't for me. But if you want a comfortable, predictable read with lots of family dynamics and domestic scenes, this might be one for you.
I was intrigued by the opening, since I'm a fan of start at the end and rewind to see how we got here, but unfortunately it was downhill from there.
Rose just irritated me with her constant judgment of everyone else around her: her parents' decision to leave their well-off upbringings to help found a hippie commune, her much prettier "cousin"/best friend Destiny (you know the type — "If I didn't love her like a sister, I would hate her because her life is so easy because she's so beautiful [and mine isn't because I'm not]"), and the other girls she encounters at school. She also spends a lot of time bemoaning her hand-me-downs from Goodwill, and (later on) the unfair choice between having a cell phone and computer and Internet or "moving into a cave ... or a hippie commune" because those are apparently the only options. Throughout the book, her focus is almost exclusively focused on creating a future with Andrew and confirming the identity of her biological father; while it's her prerogative, I found it hard to relate or sympathize because ultimately she doesn't seem to do much to achieve either — she just thinks about them a lot.
I also found the writing itself awkward. The dialogue was really stilted, working to further the plot rather than developing the characters and their relationships; there was little in the way of concrete plot, and the scenes/snippets that were detailed didn't really interest me. The ending was also disappointing; without going into spoilers, I felt that it undermined all the buildup — it wasn't bad in and of itself, just really abrupt.
Spoiler
The full-circle ending where they return to the commune to live with River, with the understanding that Rose's daughters will someday have the option to leave just as she didSo all in all, this really wasn't for me. But if you want a comfortable, predictable read with lots of family dynamics and domestic scenes, this might be one for you.