Review: To be Crazy or Get a Hysterectomy?
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 06 5, 2012
Phaedra lives alone with her kid sister and her crazy mother (who's locked away to the attic so she wouldn't injure or kill her daughters). She's trying to handle school and keep social services away. All this while she has a doomed future of ending up like her mother, since her case of telekinesis has the nasty side-effect of the crazies. When Phaedra's long lost (well he left) brother returns with a questionable cure to their mother's (and Phaedra's) condition, the book takes a turn to worse. Phaedra proves to be a whiny self-centered bastard who thinks she's all high and mighty.In my eyes Bittersweet had lots of problems, but the story was somewhat interesting and kept me reading. I didn't like the main character Phaedra at all, the mystery presented in the beginning of the book had no real effect to the plot and was simply explained in the end. The secondary characters were flat without any real meaning -- you see Phaedra's friends in the beginning and they swoon over her brother and then they're pretty much forgotten. Also sad to say, Bittersweet is in dire need of editing. There's lots of typos and some very weird word choices as "manicured eyebrows" that snapped me out of the story.The story had some good potential in the midway of the plot, when things really started happening, but the new crew that emerged was just blah and the explanation for the group of kids hunting hags didn't hold water.Since a big part of the story was that the mother is crazy and that's what awaits Phaedra in the future as well, I think it's fair to ponder about that a bit also. We learn that having sex with an incubus works like medicine against the condition, but in a fleeting moment it's mentioned that also having a hysterectomy would cure you fully. Even so it's passed as a no-go option because Phaedra thought her mother would not approve of her having one at the age of seventeen. So hmm...option 1) losing myself and be a violent crazyoption 2) get rid of my uterus and continue being saneWhich would you choose? The hysterectomy cure was apparently known before her brother popped up with the questionable antidote. And so we come to that. Since being crazy was a better option than hysterectomy, it's no surprise, that having sex with an incubus that your brother and mom are already sexing up is a better option as well. Phaedra would totally do it with the incubus if her mother told her so (seriously).The end of the book was tightly done and best part of the book, and I can't shrug off the feeling, that if the author would just have polished the beginning a bit more, it would've been so much better. I don't know... I think this review came off a bit snarky, but I feel frustrated, since I wanted to like the book and it just left me shaking my head. I do think some readers might enjoy this book, so if the points I mentioned wouldn't bother you, do give it a chance.