Review: Ending was rushed but otherwise good - Spoilers
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 04 5, 2014
I liked the way this book was set up as a diary. It's not the first book to use this format, but it uses it well and allows an intimacy with the characters you don't normally get with other formats. I liked the slow reveal of Dakota's past and the imagery used was rather poignant in many instances. I was confused at several points about Dakota's age, after first thinking he was a minor, then later it was revealed he was closer to 19/20, then later it's stated that he's 18. The ending felt rushed, like the author needed to wrap this up and ran out of ideas. I thought a couple of pretty major plot points were not handled well, such as why the police weren't called or why any doctor, even just psychologist, would take a clearly severely injured person home instead of straight to the hospital. No, John waits until the following day to take Dakota to the hospital. The part that really annoyed me at the end and made me dislike John, Dakota's "savior", was the reveal that John had transcribed Dakota's diary and given it to a publisher without Dakota's knowledge or consent, and Dakota's just okay with that? Like I said, rushed ending. Overall, I liked it okay but the ending and the plot holes didn't make much sense. 2.5 stars.