This is where I quit reading this garbage: "Oliver Jack. If there was one thing she didn't miss this summer, it was the inescapable flirtation of Oliver Jack. Never trust a guy with two first names. No matter how cute he was." At that exact moment I could see exactly where this was going and it sure as hell wasn't anywhere near where I was interested in traveling.
That wasn't very far into the story at all, and I've seriously been wondering lately if I should just quit reading female-authored novels altogether. I'd hate to do that, but it seems like it's becoming ever-harder to find a female-authored novel that isn't sticky with sugar, as well filled with trope to the wazoo, and cliché galore. It's truly nauseating. The problem is that male authors don't do any better. Male-authored books are too often way over into macho end of the spectrum in the same way that female authored novels are way too sappy. Is there no one writing in the middle for readers like me? Is it time to start reading authors somewhere else along the gender spectrum? I can tell you from personal experience that really good writers are few and far between.
This story rubbed me up the wrong way from the start. I wasn't long into it when I read for example, "It had touched down somewhere in Kent, never to be seen again." - but the question is, if it had never been seen again, how did they know where it landed? And yeah, it's a minor thing, but when you get a string of minor things, they all add up to a major problem. Surprisingly, this was not first person, which would have made it horrendously barf-worthy, but it was about a bunch of privileged high-schoolers not only flaunting, but reveling in their privilege. Yuk!
Even so I was willing to read on at least a little to see what this author would do with it, but she did precisely what most every other YA author does with their cookie-cutter clone of this kind of a story: make it about a weak woman under the thrall of a domineering and way too hands on 'hot' male that she claims she hates, but who you know she's already melting for like ice cream on an August sidewalk in Texas.
In this case the guy physically grabbed her wrist to stop her paying for her purchase and insisted he would pay for it, so there's the inappropriate touching and the "I'm the alpha male and you are my woman" horseshit right there, and this girl is such a dumb fuck that she sees nothing wrong with this assault. I was out of there from that point on because I could see then precisely where this was headed, and like I said, it sure wasn't any place I wanted to follow. I don't mind a novel where a woman starts out weak and grows strong, or starts out dumb and wises-up, but I could tell from the idiotic way this was written that there was no way in hell any of that would happen here, not with a main character named Aria. This book is shit, period. I didn't want to continue reading volume one let alone two more shit books just like it.
