This was enjoyable, though a bit rough to read.

 

It was hard to learn, with Cody, that there was so much her best friend had been keeping from her, quite a bit of which is not fully explained until the very end.

 

For reference, I totally saw early on not only that Meg

Even without that being a huge revelation to me, this was a good read about someone trying to put the pieces of their life back together after a tragedy and about a girl realizing that sometimes you don't know even those you think are closest to you.

 

Both girls were keeping stuff from each other, and the way Cody deals with Meg's secrets is by attempting to first find them all and then explain them. She does an excellent job of piecing together an awful lot of her best friend's life before she killed herself, and the process seems to be cathartic for her and teaches her a lot about herself as well.

 

I wasn't blown away by this book, but I sympathized with Cody's desire to explain something that is kind of inexplicable and with her tenacity on the subject. It was a decent read, and probably would have been an even better one for someone who reads and enjoys more contemporary YA than I do. I felt like there have been other books on the subject that have touched me more, though that is one of those personal things that has no quantifiable meaurement. At any rate, I don't regret reading it, though I'm unlikely to read it again. 

 

This was a quick and easy read with an interesting premise.

 

The idea of numbers counting down over the heads of people until their death is not completely unknown, but it is an intriguing idea that has a lot of room for expansion. 

 

The main character, Andie, is not terribly relatable, or likable, or sympathetic, or even a good person. (She's a pretty terrible person, but in a very annoying petty way that isn't very interesting, either.) She's also (this is a standard in horror, admittedly, but still something I find personally annoying) not very bright. At all. I don't particularly care what happens to her, which is slightly problematic, but not a huge deal in a short story. We don't have to be with her long. She's mostly just there to handle the premise, really, and she does a good job of that.

 

The ending has a good twist that you probably won't see coming, and since it is such a short read (it's 12 pages), it's definitely worth reading through just for that. If you like your short stories quick and twisty, this one will work just fine. 

 

 

Pride and Prejudice has a pretty horrible track record on published fanfiction, and yet I keep reading them. I have found a few gems (I love Carrie Bebris' stuff, for instance), but mostly I finish them out of hope that maybe somehow they will turn around. They almost never do, and this was par for the course in that regard.

 

There was nothing terribly wrong with this. I didn't hate it, it didn't infuriate or disgust me, it wasn't horribly written (though it wasn't exactly written well, especially given it is fanfic for a book written by a master of the craft), but I just didn't really care enough. The characters all kind of felt like caricatures of themselves and I felt like there were too many random problems thrown in the way that were resolved too easily. In addition, it didn't actually have a solid ending; the next book in the series isn't really a sequel, it is a continuation of this book, which is annoying enough normally but particularly annoying for what is basically a shorter retelling of a better novel. I won't be picking the second one up and I'm kind of reconsidering a few other Austen retellings I have on my list as well. 

I was not expecting a lot of this book to turn out the way it did, and I like that.

 

Jeff starts out seemingly confused. He has no clue why he is here and holds to that line for quite some time. As he starts making friends with those around him, the ones he considered oh-so-crazy, we start to peel away the layers of the story surrounding his stay here and why it probably is necessary.

 

He's not a trustworthy narrator, and this is pretty clear from the beginning. He starts in a psychiatric ward, but insists he has no idea why. Watching the pieces slowly come together and getting the real story behind what he presents turns this from a kind of fluffy story about a smart-mouthed kid in a weird situation into a coming-of-age story that examines an awful lot more than I was expecting.

 

Given the whole unreliable narrator bit, it's kind of hard to say too much without taking away the piecing together of clues that make this story what it is. It is solidly written and manages to vary wildly between humorous and depressing with an ease that is much harder than it seems. It probably ought to be on the required reading lists for quite a few reasons (and most of them would either get it on the list or get it on the banned list, because people are crazy), and it deals with some sensitive subjects quite well.