I Wanted Him to Die Quicker

Rating: 2.0/5

Summary: This is about a boy who is about to die in the next day and a half. Denton Little has known his death date since the age of five and that it was during his senior year of high school. Denton starts to have some fun on his last days and he ends up being a bit of an asshole. He also develops a strange rash splotch that looks like a weird bruise.

I kind of hated this book, and I was incredibly bored. I didn’t find Denton very funny either. There were times he was funny, but he would almost always step over the boundary of funny and into annoying/awkward asshole. I mostly wanted to slap the kid he was so infuriating. He tries to be funny, but he just sounds immature and I don’t buy into that shit that “boys will be boys”, so pardon me when I find your jokes crass and not entertaining.

The love triangle didn’t really work for me either. One fact was that I was not convinced about the whole Veronica and Denton hooking up thing. He had no memories of it because he was so drunk, but somehow managed to put his pants back on afterward while being that drunk. Nuh-uh, I don’t think so.

In addition, I didn’t really like Taren. All she really did was make everything about her and then cry. Crying is not my strong suit. She was so flat and boring as a character, she didn’t have any real fire to her, she would just cry… about everything. Yeah, I get that her boyfriend is about to die, but she wasn’t being very supportive of him and the whole book I was waiting for her to admit that she was hooking up with Phil.

The plot was monotonous. Nothing even really happens until the last twenty percent or so, that’s even remotely interesting. I think this should not be a series and the middle of this book could’ve been cut out, moved faster to the end and then added in whatever is going to happen in book two. I also don’t see how this series is going to end since there’s this “The government is evil and has to be re-vamped” vibe, though it’s way more subtle than the dystopia of Divergent or Delirium (and not as good as them).

One thing I did like about the book was the narrating. I listened to audiobook version and the author did a great job with all the different voices. I liked his voice for Taren because it was very nasally and was a perfect fit to how I pictured her with her snobby attitude.

Overall, this book was slightly less than okay if I were to rate it, hence the two stars. I was mainly annoyed and frustrated with the characters and the plot. I might pick up the second one, because the ending left a bunch open, but I won’t be in any hurry. I don’t think I’d really recommend this, but from other reviews it seemed like a lot of other people liked it. So, if the description is interesting, go ahead and pick it up if you’d like, but I’m not going to play cheerleader for this book.