Review: Not For Me
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 07 1, 2014
Note: Due to the fact that I don't believe I will be able to express my feelings toward this book adequately in a spoiler free review, this review will include spoilers.In almost every novel there are events that happen that suspend the realm of belief. In the case of this book, that event was Evelyn and Tristian being reunited after many years. Although I found this event unrealistic, there's always a part of me that suspends some belief while reading a novel. After all, they're fiction! Sometimes in order to make a storyline work, these things have to happen.Evelyn is a cancer survivor who lost six years of her memory due to surgery that removed tumors from the memory portion of her brain. During those six years, she dated Tristian and fell madly in love with him. Unfortunately, she does not remember any of it. Her doctors suggested her to not work on her memory while she was healing, which left her in the dark about her own past.During her healing process, she begins college. Now, when she started college after losing such a large portion of her memory, I had to assume that although she was unable to remember her own personal history, she must have somehow remembered at least a portion of her education. I made this assumption in order to make the book make more sense to me, but I have to admit that I wish that this aspect of the storyline was addressed more than mentioning that she brushed up on her studies before starting college. I also made the assumption that although she was missing several years, she also matured emotionally through those years. This making her a 20 year old of "regular" maturity instead of having the maturity of a 15 year old.On her first day at college, she becomes instant BFFs with her new roommate, who takes her to a bar to see a band. In that band is her ex-boyfriend from her missing years. (This is where I suspended belief, although the instant BFF thing was kinda annoying.)Now there becomes a point where I can no longer suspend belief. I reached this point fairly quickly in the book. Within the first day of re-meeting Tristian, Evelyn is back in bed with Tristian. She doesn't remember him at all, just what he's told her. She doesn't remember losing her virginity to him or any of the other good times they shared during their relationship. This I found really disappointing. This is coming from a girl who claimed she never swore, but she'll jump into bed with a man that claimed he was in a relationship with her in the past? It seemed out of character for the original Evelyn that was built. This Evelyn transformed throughout the story to become more of her original self, which I really did appreciate. I think this was well done. At the same time, I find it difficult to believe that this type of instant-love (after memory loss) would ever really occur. I was a bit ashamed of Evelyn. I had high hopes for this book being more about her inner workings and her rediscovery of herself, but I didn't ever feel like this was the case. Honestly, it just seemed reckless to take the word of someone she didn't know without first discussing it with someone that had knowledge of her past.One aspect of the book that I found irritating was the dialogue. Much of it was repetitive. At first, the couple calling each other "infinity" was cute, yet after a while it just turned into an overused word that really didn't seem to mean anything significant. The same with "Crazy-Ass Beautiful Girl". I can see a nickname like that being used on occasion (In fact, it sounds like something my husband would call me from time to time) but when it's used basically in place of using her name, that's a bit much. Other than the repetitiveness of the dialogue, the amount was fairly unnerving as well. Recently I read a book with basically no dialogue and I was super annoyed. This book took it the other direction. Really, the book seems to be about 90% dialogue. I was craving more narrative. I wanted to know how Evelyn was feeling deep down. I guess I expected something a bit deeper than what was on the pages. The dialogue between Evelyn and Tristian rarely seemed to go deeper than the saccharine love-y dove-y stuff. The girl was going through major medical emergencies, but none of this was truly discussed on an emotional level between the two. Just more, "Infinity" and "Crazy-Ass Beautiful Girl"s.I found the entire ordeal with first pregnancy just insane. Evelyn had cancer. She was only eleven week pregnant. I'm not saying that I'm an advocate for abortion, but in her case, it was medically necessary to save her life. Were I in her mother's position, I would do the same thing. The mother is made out to be this evil entity but the way I see it, she was trying to save her sixteen year old daughter's life. I also found Evelyn's reaction to her mother completely childish. Not once did she ever ask her mother for her side of the story in such a way that would actually get a response, just a screaming "HOW COULD YOU DO THIS?" **hang up the phone** kind of way. Maybe it's the mother in me, but I'd rather my child be alive and hate me than dead. Period.There's many other aspects that I found disappointing, such as Evelyn moving in with Tristian after knowing him less than a week. Don't even get me started on the second pregnancy! As someone who suffers from infertility, I found it downright insulting that she became pregnant basically one of the first times she had sex with Tristian again. Ugh. Anyhow, I feel that I've mentioned enough with what I've already said so I'll quit now.I'm not writing this off as a terrible book. It's just not for me. I feel that there was so much potential in this story and I was so excited to read it, but I'm severely disappointed with how I feel after actually reading it. I feel that this author has a bright future if she continues to think of stories that are this fresh. She just needs a bit more work on the execution of the story, but hey, practice makes perfect.