The plot of Crane’s young adult novel sounded intriguing when my book club picked it for our last book of the year. Young woman is the lone survivor of a plane crash in Ireland. Suffering from amnesia, she finds herself struggling to recall anything about who she is. Enter handsome, slightly ruffled blue-eyed Irish-accented stranger. I know, I know. In my defense, I was hopeful that the whole true identity situation would bear some satisfying fruit from the plot tree. Sadly, it did not.
I’m not a reader who is generally hung up on genre. I dabble in YA, romance, fantasy, sci-fi, and historical fiction with equal affection. A well-written book is a well-written book. While I can sometimes get so involved in a story line that I forgive some pretty mediocre writing (looking at you Twilight series), a novel needs to at least have a riveting plot. Give me a situation that I want to follow and I’m invested. I’ll just breeze by the repetitive use of words like “preternatural” to get to the good parts.
This particular book didn’t hook me enough to overlook its flaws. While not completely predictable, I did find myself unraveling bits of the “twist” fairly early on. Certain elements of the story were wearily repetitive and honestly, a smidge insulting to the reader. The over simplification in some YA really rubs me the wrong way so that may be just my own sore spot getting poked. However, in the end, it was the naval gazing of the main character that did me in. She was insufferable.
I get that the book is YA, but so much really, really good YA is out there ripe for the picking. After Rainbow Rowell, in particular, the bar is set very high. In the end, this story was something that I would have much preferred to watch than read. Put this on Netflix and I’m grabbing the popcorn.