So someone in CBRVII quite liked this one, and as a sucker for a good young adult I was game. At least I thought I was a sucker for good young adult, but finally, with this one I might have to admit that I can’t handle the angst anymore.
This is the story of siblings Mikey, Mel and their friends. In their little rural town in Washington things go weird at the high school, but it’s not their concern. They’re not the heroes, but side kids: the normal ones who just go about their days trying to make it to graduation without the school blowing up again. This time it’s immortals, but in the past it’s been vampires, ghosts etc. They deal with the normal end of high school angst and going their separate ways before college.
And overall it was okay. I really enjoyed in general how the teenagers were drawn, at least at the start. They felt more realistic than a lot of other teens that I’ve read in the past few years, looking at you John Green. I also really liked the idea of not the heroes story for once, but what about everyone else? What’s going on with them? Although my favorite was that these “heroic events” occurred cyclically, every four years or so, so the adults know about them (as it happened to them), but choose to mostly ignore it. Kind of awesome actually.
What didn’t swing for me this time was the angst. It started out at a bearable level, but as it went on ratcheted up 100% by the end. I can’t handle that level. I don’t think I could have as a teenager either. I know all teenagers think themselves the center of the universe, but seriously, GET OVER YOURSELVES CHILDREN. And this is why I think I might need a break from some of these young adults. I’m just not able to process such obnoxious kiddos anymore. I might be able to in the future, but for now I need a breather.
In summary, it was a decent enough book with quite a clever premise, but the angst was too much for me. If you can handle that then I highly, highly recommend, otherwise you’ve been forewarned.
Yeah, the self-centered angst is what ruined this book for me. As a matter of fact, I only read it a couple of weeks ago and had completely forgotten about it until your review. That’s how badly I needed a break from that nonsense. Well, that and I really wanted to smack almost everyone at least once.