Review: Greating writing - horrible, depressing story
Rating: 1 out of 5
Date: 10 27, 2013
This book was so incredibly depressing I couldnt believe it. I almost cried several times, and the ending was just ... awful. And the sample chapter of the next book ("Winter's Dream") made me sick to my stomach.Spoilers.Bixby (the heroine) has a pretty depressing life. Not *bad* in sense that she's abused, but ignored. It's like a Cinderella story without the happy ending. Her life is a sad, lonely place where she takes care of her mentally ill grandmother, has an absentee father, dead mother, and the story starts with her one friend, her brother, having died in a car crash a week before. Cheerful, no? Dont worry, it gets worse.She meets a boy in her dreams who says he can give her her brother back in return for talking to him in her dreams. She's convinced it's a dream but still says yes. Bad move. The more she finds out about Jordan, the worse it gets. When she confronts him, he turns abusive, and she screams that she never wants to see him again, he kicks her out of her dream world. But wait! It gets worse. Her life immediately goes straight to hell. If there's a bad thing that can happen, it immediately does (in the span of a day or two). She's convinced Jordan is ruining her life, and though it's never confirmed, it's an exceedingly logic conclusion. This from someone who claims to have loved her forever. Hmmm... yep, abusive boyfriend, check.****MAJOR SPOILERS**** She ends the book in a juvenile rehab facility, which is basically the author's idea of every terrible thing an orphanage could be. Little Orphan Annie has nothing on Bixby. The sample chapter of the next book starts with her being caught by an evil employee of the orphanage who, when the chapter ends, it about to violently rape her. Did I mention she's 16 or so? Yes, thank you Ms. Jaeger, that's just what I wanted to read in my fiction.I couldnt put this book down because it was so gripping but.. .horrible. Like a bloody car crash where they're stacking the bodies up at the side of the road, and you're so sick about it but just cant look away. I kept hoping it would get better for her, and every time I thought "Whoa, this is terrible" things got worse. It was depressing how much the author was able to pile on this poor girl's shoulders. Yes, the story was intense and gripping and had fabulous writing - I cant deny that I felt like I was right there with Bixby. But honestly, if I wanted to feel that horrible, I could google mass school shootings and read every detail (that wasnt something that happened, but I could completely see it - perhaps in book 2? Which I wont, for the love of god, be buying.)I honestly cant believe this was marketed for a teen audience (which, though it doesnt specifically state "young adult", most books with teen protagonists are.)  I loved Ms Jaeger's books "The Cold King" and "The Fire King" and it blows my mind how she could drastically change her style. In those books (especially "The Cold King") while the hero started off kind of an a-hole, it got better. It never required either of it's heroines' worlds to drop to the utter destruction Bixby experienced.If I save one person the depression of reading this book, I'll consider my work here done. Consider yourself warned.