Rating: ★★★☆☆
It's been a crazy week/two weeks on the blog! Between Harper Lee's new novel and YALC, there hasn't been much time for reading or posting of reviews. I'm sorry for that, though you've all seemed to enjoy the YALC posts a lot, and from now on everything will be back to normal - starting with a review of Minus Me.
Plot
During a diving competition Linda discovers that she has a rare heart condition and is told that her only hope of surviving is a heart transplant. Sensitive, introspective, and intelligent, Linda refuses to be wrapped up in cotton wool, despite her parent’s wishes. Determined to experience everything a 13-year-old girl should, Linda starts to work her way through a list of all the things she and her best friend wish to do: have a first kiss, go to a pop concert, travel without parents . . . But as Linda starts to tick these off, a mysterious emo boy called Zak appears — and always at the most unexpected moments. And he is happy to accompany her on daring escapades, particularly those that her timid best friend refuses to go on. But is Zak good or bad? And why is he the only one that Linda can share her fears with?
Review
It's hard to decide how to rate a book like Minus Me. On the one hand, I absolutely adored the plot. It was a very original and I never really knew where it was going. Thought Zak seems easy to figure out from that Goodreads summary, he definitely isn't. He keeps changing and as reader you're never sure who he is. The ending also throws you for a loop and it is definitely a "what???!!" moment.
On the other hand, the writing completely turned me off. I realize the narrator of this books is a young teen, but the weird thing was that her speaking voice was the most pleasant thing to read. What I disliked was the way the third person was pulled off. I've never read the name "Linda" so often in my life! I counted 11 uses of the name on one page: 11! And once I start noticing things like that, it just becomes a major pet-peeve that I can't get over. Descriptions were also often very useless and there was a lot of focus on things that didn't seem to matter in the end. Personally, I'm already not overly fond of description, so when it's used to describe something irrelevant, it annoys me... a lot.
So how to rate this book? I think this is a three out of five. The story line was great and if the writing was my kinda thing, it would have been one of my favourite books. However, the writing style just really didn't suit me, so I can't give this more than that!