a TeMPLe of WoRDS

Before I sat down to write this review, I spent at least 30 minutes venting about it to my mom (my sounding board) and she told me to write exactly what I said to her.  So, here goes...

I hated this book!  HATED!!  (Until I spoke to my mom, I really actually considered giving it a 1 or 2, but after my vent, I decided that a neutral 3 would be just fine).  It wasn't that I don't love YA books or fantasies because I do.  It's not that I'm an adult and I just don't get it because that's not true either.  It wasn't because I didn't WANT to love this book because I truly did.  It's just...

This is a story about a young girl in high school.  She has a sister, a mom, a dad and two best friends.  She's the really smart nerdy one, whereas her sister is the beautiful athletic one.  She goes unnoticed, her sister is one of the most popular.  And her parents love her sister more, have no qualms proving this fact - though they can't see how she could possibly come to that conclusion.  Right before homecoming, things change - she meets up with her old best friend who she hasn't seen since the family moved away (across town, not to the other side of the planet, yet they haven't talked since?) and all of a sudden she's going over to the friend's house to spend the night, the friend is making her a dress for homecoming and fixing her up with her cousin. 

Homecoming is where I decide that I hate this book and I honestly almost put it down, not to pick it up again.  It was so ... stupid.  Fantasies are meant to be unrealistic, but this is so farfetched that it's not possible for me to even believe a little bit of it.  Her friend fixes her up and she's beautiful.  She goes downstairs with the friend to meet her date and *rolls eyes* she just can't stop looking (and thinking - this is 1st person) about how gorgeous he is.  She even says to him "I've missed you so much" and he replies "Not as much as I've missed you."  What?!?!  And she doesn't find anything weird about this exchange.  Then her, the girl who is a member of the CSI club and no one notices, somehow becomes Junior Homecoming Princess, beating out the popular girl who had been Homecoming Princess the last two years?  Unrealistic.  (And no I'm not giving away the whole book here, so don't worry.  This all happens in like the first 10% of the book.)

Not only is it stupid, but the writing is really - I don't want to say childish because that's rude - young, the writing is young.  Yes it's YA, but they're in high school and it reads like a book for children or middle school.  And for her being the smartest girl in school, she comes across really *shrugs* dumb and immature - I mean everything changes with this homecoming dance.  I had to force myself to read on and I only did that because I wanted to understand what was going on with her, not out of any real character connection.

That's another thing.  The characters are very um boring.  There was nothing to them. 

There were two parts that caught my attention: the whole thing with Tanner - he opened up questions because he knew too much.  The situation with Emma and Hailey - that was Mean Girls-ish, but interesting as it played out.

What's sad is that there's a good story idea here.  She's having these strange occurrences and I really didn't expect the reason behind it, but it just wasn't ... let's put it this way: me, the person who HAS to finish a series, has absolutely no interest in reading the rest of the series.  That says a lot.

Note: I received a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.