The Blurb:

Blood can both wound and heal . . .

Willa is lucky: She has a loving blended family that gets along. Not all families are so fortunate. But when a bloody crime takes place hundreds of miles away, it has an explosive effect on Willa’s peaceful life. The estranged father she hardly remembers has murdered his new wife and children, and is headed east toward Willa and her mother. Under police protection, Willa discovers that her mother has harbored secrets that are threatening to boil over. Has everything Willa believed about herself been a lie? But as Willa sets out to untangle the mysteries of her past, she also keeps her own secret—one that has the potential to tear apart all she holds dear.

My Review: I love Susan Beth Pfeiffer. I still think “Life as We Knew it” was one of the best middle grade books I’ve ever read. This book wasn’t on level with that, but it was still good and still intense and also really creepy. Pfeiffer does a wonderful job at making adult characters who have understandable motives into people you can *really* hate. Seriously. I hated every adult in this book and most of the kids. I hate how insensitive everyone in the story is. I hate how high and mighty everyone is. I completely get Willa’s mental state in this book because if I was stuck in her life and couldn’t lash out at the people who deserved it, I’d go crazy too.

There’s a scene at the end that sort of explains everything that was well written, and very chilliing, but was also kind of a cop-out tell for the author. Willa imagines what happened from the POV of her father. She sees the murders. But not in a like “I’m having nightmares and imagining these horrible murders because it’s all I’ve thought about lately” but in a very “this IS what happened. And I know this IS what happened because his blood flows through my veins.” It was a neat scene, but as a writer it pulled me right out of the story because it was such a blatant authorial intrusion that I think could have been included in a more natural way, OR if we’re going for supernatural abilities experienced by Willa as a series of nightmares that she doesn’t understand the meaning of that get much creepier when she realizes that’s what really happened.

The plot was tense and kept moving, the characters, while hatable, were fully developed, and I really enjoyed the book despite the sick feeling it left me at. Pfeiffer is *really* good at gritty realism.

The Blurb:

Legacy Kore is an average seventeen year old with your basic insane crush on the hottest guy in school… rather Adin Shepard was the hottest guy in school before he graduated a couple of weeks ago. Now it’s summer vacation and she’s not sure when she’ll get to see him again. Until he shows up at her surprise seventeenth birthday party. Cue saliva glands–it’s time to drool.

But her giddiness is cut short when her guardian delivers an emotional blow, telling Legacy her mother hadn’t died when she was baby, but that she’d left for Legacy’s protection all those years ago. After the initial shock, she expects some story about how her mother was in the Witness Protection Program or something else just as crazy, but when she’s told that her mother is a Greek Goddess and that Legacy is changing into one too, she thinks her guardian needs a trip to a mental hospital. Legacy a goddess? Um, yeah. Right. And her BFF is the Easter Bunny.

While trying to make sense out of something that was impossible to believe, Adin asks Legacy out on a date. She is thrilled that her fantasy might become a reality, but when she meets the new guy in town, River, she discovers everything isn’t always as it seems, and the legacy she wants just might not be the legacy she is destined to have.

My review:

We heard from Mrs. Muse last Monday for a guest Mythology Monday, and I wanted to take the opportunity to follow up with a review for this fun, free read.

This is absolutely the most unique take I’ve read on a Greek myth. Instead of being the actual gods, or reincarnations of gods, these gods clone themselves, and their little clones are given the opportunity to ascend to full divinity. I also liked that there were monsters in the story. This author is also very good at extracting every possible iota of sexual tension from a situation and getting it all down on the page. There’s this one scene where Adin hugs Legacy, just hugs, and I swear those three pages could give any harlequin sex scene a run for its money. And that’s what your first love is like! I remember when holding my husband’s hand was a big deal. I think it’s easy to look back at those mini-milestones and feel like they aren’t significant, but they were at the time.

Interesting book, and bonus, it’s free on amazon kindle! It’s always really entertaining to see what other writers have done with “my” myths. It’s crazy to me (in a good way) how we can all look at the same source material (most likely) and get all the same information, and come out with such wildly different takes on it. Isn’t creativity fascinating?

The Blurb

With the tale of Seeds, M.M. Kin explores the myth of Hades and Persephone, drawing upon elements of the original myth, while giving new life to an ages-old story… romance, drama, action, and spice, it’s all here!

Seeds: Volume One

Longing. Need. Desire. Hades, the Lord of the Underworld, has never felt any of these in his long life until a chance encounter with the Goddess of Spring. For as long as she can remember, Persephone has always been told what to do, her life dictated by people who believe they know what is best for her without taking the time to understand or listen to her. However, the opportunity to truly be herself awaits her in the most unlikely of places, sparking one of the most famous and enduring relationships that history has ever known…

A quick disclaimer:

This is NOT a YA book. Let me repeat that loud and clear since this blog belongs to a YA author. This is NOT a YA book. It is a very good book, but there are some very graphic scenes involving sexual content. If you’re a young adult reader, wait a few years before checking this one out.

We good? Okay. 🙂

My review: I was impressed by the level of research that went into this book. As a writer who has thoroughly researched Greek mythology, it was really cool to see how someone took the same information and made it theirs. But M.M Kin took her research to a whole different level by actually setting her story in Ancient Greece.

Her setting was very well done, very real. I had a solid sense of where we were, and somehow, despite the story being set way,way long ago, the characters were still accessible. That’s a tough balance. You can’t drop super modern characters into a setting like that ands expect it to work, but you can’t make your ancient characters too ancient without risking your modern audience. M.M Kin struck a wonderful balance between modern sensibilities, and characters that felt like they belonged in an ancient setting.

I was pleased to see Demeter’s story so fleshed out. The first third of the book focused on Demeter’s life and the birth of her daughter. The second third focused on Persephone’s life growing up, and the last third takes place in the Underworld. I felt the story balanced well, though once we hit the Underworld the book takes a pretty significant shift to erotica land. There was still story and very well developed characters, so it wasn’t like just sex scene after sex scene. M.M Kin took the time to develop the characters and the world thoroughly.

When I emailed M.M Kin she said “There’s several important differences between my book and the original myth. I wanted Persephone to be less of a victim, and Hades to be less of a villain. I notice in the original myth that Zeus and Demeter are never scolded for their part in the disaster, and that people always point at Hades and say ‘bad boy’ for his part in the myth even though he wasn’t the one who sent a famine upon Greece or gave Persephone away without her mother’s knowledge or permission, so I try to address this in Seeds. I do have to warn, Seeds has some steamy scenes, so it’s not for kids!”

Zeus and Demeter are definitely held accountable (or I foresee they will be in the sequels) for their parts in the Persephone myth, though I’m curious how that’s going to be handled in Demeter’s case. But I hope Hades isn’t let off the hook either. While her Hades is less of a villain than in the original myth, he’s still not a good guy. Which is why she said “less of a villain” not that he isn’t one. This is still the Persephone myth, while dialed down there is still an element of bad to Hades’ actions. He stalks Persephone and watches her with his helmet of invisibility. True, he doesn’t DO anything to her, or watch her change or anything, but his rationale for stalking is that Demeter wouldn’t have let him court Persephone. One wrong doesn’t answer another. Stalking is still a major violation. And while he doesn’t rape her and drag her down to the Underworld, he does still **spoiler alert**

drag her down to the Underworld, refuse to let her leave, and consistently disregards her requests for him to stop touching her all the while saying he won’t do anything to her that she doesn’t want him to do. If he stood by that, I would have better feelings for his character, but what he actually means is I won’t do anything I don’t think you don’t want to do. He doesn’t cross the line to sex, but he does pretty much everything else, even after being told repeatedly to stop.

Now we’re in Persephone’s head, so we get the fact that she doesn’t actually want him to stop, and eventually she tells him so, but it’s not like he backed off until she told him so. Maybe it wasn’t rape, but it was still sexual assault. The reason I wouldn’t recommend this book to young adults isn’t the content of the sex scenes, but the message they send that really when a girl says no, she means yes, and continuing to violate her will eventually lead to consent.

That being said, while I’m not a fan of Hades in this book, I’m a huge fan of Persephone. Despite being manipulated all her life by her mother, and now by Hades, there’s still a strength in this character that makes me think maybe Hades will be answering for his actions in the next book along with Demeter and Zeus.

And maybe the person they’ll be answering to, is her.

The Blurb: Ninety-five days, and then I’ll be safe. I wonder whether the procedure will hurt. I want to get it over with. It’s hard to be patient. It’s hard not to be afraid while I’m still uncured, though so far the deliria hasn’t touched me yet. Still, I worry. They say that in the old days, love drove people to madness. The deadliest of all deadly things: It kills you both when you have it and when you don’t.(less)

My review:
So the more I read dystopian fiction, the more I find myself having to divide my reviews into two major sections. Whether or not I buy the society, and whether or not I liked the story. Most of the time those two line up, but with Delirium they didn’t.

I didn’t buy the society of Delirium. Oh I can buy a society choosing to lobotomize itself in order to cut down on destructive emotions, after all, Uglies features a society that intentionally gives itself brain damage in order to be compliant. The difference with Uglies though is the trade off, the near perfect society, made me wonder if it would be worth the cost.

To me, that’s what a good dystopian novel does. It behaves like a Utopian society in every way until you realize the price. The hidden horror lurking just beneath the surface, and your dystopian protagonist has to decide, is it worth it? Do I become complicit in these horrible happenings to reap the reward of comfort, society, and equality? Is THIS what it takes to have it all?

Now obviously, many famous dystopian novels don’t go the Utopian route. 1984, Anthem, Brave New World, not a single one of those societies featured a place I’d want to live. And more and more, YA dystopian stories are modeling themselves after those stories. The Hunger Games, Matched, Divergent. Class struggles and poverty still exist. It makes me a little sad to see this theme becoming predominant in YA.We paid the awful price, and what to we have to show for it? Nothing. No one from the outside looking in would think they’ve landed in Utopia. Everything is so bad we don’t even bother with the illusion of prosperity. The trend of dystopian novels in YA already reflected an uncertainty about our future, the shift to bleak dystopias indicate sheer hopelessness.

Another thing that a dystopian novels has to do, to me, is make me buy into the dystopia. There has to be logic, no matter how twisted. I can see love becoming a horror story, but the actual procedure doesn’t behave in consistent way. If you lobotomize the brain, it’s not just love you get rid of. It’s personality, hate, fear. You become a zombie. And the adults sometimes acted like that. Sometimes they were aggressive, and judgmental, and violent. Now no procedure on the brain is going to impact everyone the exact same way, so I was willing to accept the sheer number of people in the society that seemed to enjoy being violent. But not within the same person. So one of two things was happening in this society. Either the author wasn’t consistent with the procedure (no one should have felt extremes, thus you shouldn’t have enraged child abusers and over aggressive soldiers) Or the author didn’t do a good enough job explaining that it is not in fact a lobotomy the characters are getting, just a diminished capacity for love. In which case, her descriptions were inconsistent, and the cure would not have “cured” an urge to exercise, a sexual preference on a base level, the urge to reproduce, ect. The people in this society stilled cared what others thought of them, still exhibited pride and judgement, they still got angry. It just wasn’t consistent so I could not buy the society.

That being said though, I still liked the books. The story was good, even if the society wasn’t. The writing was beautiful! Poetic! Flowing. Honestly, it was fantastic writing. The descriptions!!! The nursery rhymes, the book of Shhh. While not believable to me, the world building that went into this was still amazing. I didn’t really like any of the characters that much but I didn’t like them because I wouldn’t like them in person, if that makes sense? They were 3 dimensional, well developed, whole characters. I just happen to dislike most of their personalties. I never really bought into the romance, but for a book series about love, I have to applaud that Oliver never actually made the story ALL about love. The world, the characters, and everything EXIST. The love story doesn’t drive the plot of the series, it could stand without it, the world didn’t stop and revolve around the two characters. Yay for having an identity Lena outside of lovestruck teen! Good for you 🙂 I did love the friendships formed in this series, and I love that those friendships didn’t revolve around the romance either. The girls talked to each other about things OTHER than boys. As in they had a life. Identities outside of their crush’s. I’m super impressed by that, and very happy to see it in a book that could have SO easily slipped way too far in the other direction without being called on it, because of the whole love is literally forbidden angle of this story. Like, in this context, and this context alone, disappearing into the romance would have been an act of rebellion and the romance could have actually been its own character and everything could have been all codependent and reliant on the love story, and for book 1, I was a bit worried it would do that but it didn’t!

I did feel that the ending of the series was rushed. I like that everything wasn’t neatly tied up with a bow, but despite not resolving much, the ending just felt gleaned over. And Oliver can DO endings. I read “Before I Fall.” Endings, are her fricken forte. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn there’s one more book for this series. There’s enough there for one.

Overall, I’d read it. I enjoyed it. You probably will to.

In Ancient Greece, the invocation “May the Gods watch over you” was more than a spoken blessing. It was an entreaty for divine benevolence.

When Damon sees a beautiful woman alone, far from civilization, he can’t help but be drawn to her. But his life–as it should have been– is altered and twisted by the immortal touch of deity.

Damon’s daughter, Phoibe, is raised to be wary and distrustful of the gods.

And so she must choose–

If Phoibe marries a mortal, she risks eternal solitude for a moment of love.

If she follows her heart, she risks spurning a god.

The gods are powerful, and their knowledge is vast.

But the gods…

The gods are far from perfect.

Origin of the Sphinx is a novella detailing the story leading up to the creation of the mythological creature, the Sphinx. It is the beginning of the Sphinx series.

My Review:

As the framing of the novel made clear, The Origin of the Sphinx is a prequel to Raye Wagner’s upcoming novel Curse of the Sphinx. If you’ve got a free hour or three, I’d recommend devoting it to reading this novella to get a better look at this little known myth. A lot of people don’t know that the Sphinx wasn’t just an Egyptian thing. They were Greek monsters as well.

The difference between the Egyptian and Greek Sphinx was gender. The Greek Sphinx was female. The origin of the Sphinx varied widely depending on the myth. In most tales the are yet more children of Echidna and Typhus, but their parentage varies with the myth, which is why I really love the direction Wagner took this story because Apollo’s temples were often decorated with Sphinx statues, so there’s room for a connection there and her’s captures the spirit of the Greek gods perfectly.

The Greek gods were petty, and jealous, and a lot like Tinkerbelle. Whatever emotion they were experiencing in any given myth took them over completely. But they were also complex, and wise, and charismatic. Wagner manages to capture that essence along with the mixed feelings of respect, awe, and fear the mortals living among them would have likely experienced.

In terms of tone, this story reminded me of Rita Webb’s Daughter of the Goddess. Reading it is like being told a fairytale. I’m really looking forward to where this series is going to go.

The Blurb: A brilliant satire of mass culture and the numbing effects of technology, White Noise tells the story of Jack Gladney, a teacher of Hitler studies at a liberal arts college in Middle America. Jack and his fourth wife, Babette, bound by their love, fear of death, and four ultramodern offspring, navigate the rocky passages of family life to the background babble of brand-name consumerism. Then a lethal black chemical cloud, unleashed by an industrial accident, floats over there lives, an “airborne toxic event” that is a more urgent and visible version of the white noise engulfing the Gladneys—the radio transmissions, sirens, microwaves, and TV murmurings that constitute the music of American magic and dread.

It’s really rare that I don’t finish a book. Plus a friend recommended this to me, so I tried SO hard to finish this, but I’d…no offense Karen, rather shove dull splinters beneath my nails then spend another ten minutes reading this book. 😦 Sorry.

The premise is interesting, and the book is filled with zingy one-liners that, to quote another friend from book club “made it seem like the author had a journal of witty sayings and was determined to insert every one into this book to say ‘look how clever I am.” I liked the zingy one-liners, and I have to admit to enjoying the most photographed barn in America that got its fame by being the most photographed barn in America. But I’m just too burnt out for this novel right now.

And let’s be clear, I have a Master’s degree in English and write for a living. I absolutely recognize the literary merits of the novel. I get it enough to realize the bulk of its cleverness went right over my poor, overtaxed excuse of a brain. But other than giving me PTSD-like flashes to my summer studying for the GRE: Literature in English test, it didn’t do much for me. Maybe I’m just too fresh out of school to read anything for pure literary merits. Right now I am happily devouring every young adult novel my local library has to offer for the pure joy of getting to read something that doesn’t insist upon itself. I may try again when I’m in a better frame of mind for this. But I don’t expect that to be soon.

Two happy side notes:

1) This is the anniversary of my husband’s and my first date. 🙂
2) My three year old now thinks it’s possible to get into a bubble.

The Blurb:

Cassia has always trusted the Society to make the right choices for her: what to read, what to watch, what to believe. So when Xander’s face appears on-screen at her Matching ceremony, Cassia knows with complete certainty that he is her ideal mate… until she sees Ky Markham’s face flash for an instant before the screen fades to black.

The Society tells her it’s a glitch, a rare malfunction, and that she should focus on the happy life she’s destined to lead with Xander. But Cassia can’t stop thinking about Ky, and as they slowly fall in love, Cassia begins to doubt the Society’s infallibility and is faced with an impossible choice: between Xander and Ky, between the only life she’s known and a path that no one else has dared to follow.

The review:

I liked the concept of this trilogy, but I couldn’t get behind the main character. Actually, I couldn’t get behind any of the characters. They just all read flat to me. I didn’t understand their motivations (particularly Xander’s, seriously). I also don’t think this series offered much new in the dystopian landscape. Their society could have been taken right out of the pages of The Giver, except there was also a love-triangle element. Scratch that, in The Giver, the society made sense. The society came across Utopian and as you read, you were given the nagging sense everything wasn’t as perfect as it seemed. This society hit you over the head with its wrongness so forcefully that I seriously couldn’t understand why the people within it were putting up with it. The leadership led in an illogical, hyper-emotion based way. Literally every character introduced by name in the book was being manipulated by the government on some deeply personal way. Who has time to micro-manage people like that? And when the government is so invasive that entire streets of people have to be relocated every few years people notice, no matter what pills they take. So pretty much everything added to this society that wasn’t from The Giver made no sense whatsoever.

The characters were bland, and every time a character got not bland it was a death sentence. I liked the second and third book better, they were grittier and absolutely filled with the non-bland redshirts, but as the series went on, the protagonist made less and less sense, the triangle really made no sense after book one, Xander went from being an okay character that was slightly clueless to pathetic, and Ky… I just didn’t feel him or Cassia enough to enjoy the books.

Two stars because the covers are awesome.

One choice can transform you, or destroy you. Every choice has consequences, and as unrest surges in the factions all around her, Tris Prior must continue trying to save those she loves, and herself, while grappling with haunting questions of grief and forgiveness, identity and loyalty, politics and love.

My review: Okay, I’m fully expecting hate mail for this review. I liked this book enough to devour it in one sitting, and I am eagerly awaiting the third installment, but I felt like this book was a bit too much like Mockingjay. There were SO many new characters and places, and so many plots (not plot like THE plot, but like plotting evil plans type plots) that I could barely keep up, worse though, I didn’t particularly want to.

Tris was depressed and upset for most of the book, and consequently took bigger and bigger risks. It was realistic in terms of her being human, but depressed characters are hard to care about. I had the same problem with Sazed in the third Mistborn, and I think that book was amazing, so that’s no reflection on the writer. She wrote a very real, multi-dimensional character. Tris couldn’t have reacted any other way and still been Tris. But she was still really annoying to read. Four too. All the characters were pretty much in a constant state of shock and depression throughout the whole book, which again, while realistic, made it very difficult to connect and get all the new people, plots, and places.

Still, I’m excited about the next book. Can’t wait to read it.

The Blurb: In Beatrice Prior’s dystopian Chicago world, society is divided into five factions, each dedicated to the cultivation of a particular virtue–Candor (the honest), Abnegation (the selfless), Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the peaceful), and Erudite (the intelligent). On an appointed day of every year, all sixteen-year-olds must select the faction to which they will devote the rest of their lives. For Beatrice, the decision is between staying with her family and being who she really is–she can’t have both. So she makes a choice that surprises everyone, including herself.

During the highly competitive initiation that follows, Beatrice renames herself Tris and struggles alongside her fellow initiates to live out the choice they have made. Together they must undergo extreme physical tests of endurance and intense psychological simulations, some with devastating consequences. As initiation transforms them all, Tris must determine who her friends really are–and where, exactly, a romance with a sometimes fascinating, sometimes exasperating boy fits into the life she’s chosen. But Tris also has a secret, one she’s kept hidden from everyone because she’s been warned it can mean death. And as she discovers unrest and growing conflict that threaten to unravel her seemingly perfect society, she also learns that her secret might help her save those she loves . . . or it might destroy her.

The Review: I always wait so long to read these popular books, and I don’t know why because they are always SO good. I loved this story. First of all, this is present tense very well. That’s hard to pull off. I could not put this book down. The action was great, and the story just didn’t seem to stop coming. I enjoyed it right up until the end, and there I think it fell apart a bit.

I think the end (by which I mean the last third of the book, once the whole competition is over) should not have been a part of this book. It happened far too fast and seemed to come out of nowhere. I think it would have been a better beginning of the next book. It’s just such a completely different tone that it felt jarring. It didn’t belong.

Despite that, this is an awesome five star book. I enjoyed every minute of reading it.

 

The blurb: When the concierge of The Alexander, a historic Atlanta apartment building, invites his fellow residents to join him for weekly screenings of Downton Abbey, four very different people find themselves connecting with the addictive drama, and—even more unexpectedly—with each other…

Samantha Davis married young and for the wrong reason: the security of old Atlanta money—for herself and for her orphaned brother and sister. She never expected her marriage to be complicated by love and compromised by a shattering family betrayal.

Claire Walker is now an empty nester and struggling author who left her home in the suburbs for the old world charm of The Alexander, and for a new and productive life. But she soon wonders if clinging to old dreams can be more destructive than having no dreams at all.

And then there’s Brooke MacKenzie, a woman in constant battle with her faithless ex-husband. She’s just starting to realize that it’s time to take a deep breath and come to terms with the fact that her life is not the fairy tale she thought it would be.

For Samantha, Claire, Brooke—and Edward, who arranges the weekly gatherings—it will be a season of surprises as they forge a bond that will sustain them through some of life’s hardest moments—all of it reflected in the unfolding drama, comedy, and convergent lives of Downton Abbey.

My thoughts: Okay, so this is going to be one of my very rare bad reviews. It’s my fault. This is not my type of book. I picked it up at a book exchange and money is tight and library wait times are long. So I finally picked it up.

I think one reason I didn’t like it is because it was just close enough to be my actual life that the differences made it jarring. I live outside of Atlanta, and lived in Atlanta for quit some time. Never, in my whole life have I heard people say “Oh, I live ITP” or “OTP” (inside or outside of the perimeter) instead of saying I live in midtown, Buckhead, near Piedmont Park, or whatever. I don’t know why it annoyed me to the extent that it did, but it did. To be fair, the author lives in Atlanta too, so maybe it’s just something people in her crowd do.

I’m a writer. So are one of the characters. I have a very, very difficult time believing a book that was apparently sketched out enough to land a contract and have an agent all excited that this book could really launch that characters carer could be so undeveloped that the character is flipping out because her 1) characters aren’t named 2) the writer doesn’t know the characters motivations, and 3) the author can’t produce the first three chapters within a week or two. Sorry! I don’t buy it. That the author also sold her house, and moved to an apartment so she could write full time (why move to do that btw?) without feeling passionate enough about her story to think it through BEFORE making a life changing gamble just makes no sense to me.

The “struggling single mom” doesn’t need to work, and sends her kids to private school on her ex-husband’s dime. I can see being stressed because he’s always behind on child support, but the kids are school aged. You are not struggling if you have the luxury of staying home. I stay home with my daughter and I’m married to a husband with a steady job. It’s a struggle for us to manage and that’s with me writing full time for multiple paying markets. Random single mom character, you aren’t struggling. Stop whining.

These women were professional victims. Random single mom is all upset because she doesn’t like her apartment, if it were up to her she would move some place more homey. Her ex offers to buy the place so he can move into it instead and she can move elsewhere, Oh that jerk! How dare he! Oh, if it were up to her she’d send her children to a public school, but he insists on a private school… that jerk (You’d choose to send your children to a public school in inner city Atlanta, Really?)

Random author is handed publicity most authors would kill for…and she whines because she can’t find the passion to write anymore. Nothing is as fun as watching Downton Abby.

Random old money character feels like her siblings are taking advantage of her husband’s money, so she bullies her butler into hiring her brother and cries victim when the brother who is always doing stupid things, does something stupid. Never mind that fact that she literally only married her husband for his money. Oh she came to love him, but she’d never stop being grateful that he rescued her from her dead parents debt (which does not inherit, btw, so how did it get passed on to the kids?)

And the lengthy descriptions of episodes of Downton Abbey. Writing rule, never ever rely on something outside of your story to describe something to your readers.

To be fair, the characters all grow and change, but I was so mad at them I didn’t even care. I alternated between outright hating them and wanting to punch them in the face. I’m going back to young adult and fantasy books where the characters have problems worth whining about.