Review: Okay YA Mystery, but difficult to believe in places
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 08 10, 2013
(Source: I received a digital copy of this book for free on a read-to-review basis. Thanks to author Megg Jensen.)15-year-old Tabitha has spent her summers on her grandparent's farm since she was 8 and her mother put her on a plane alone to send her there. Every year after summer was over, her mother sent for her though, and they took off on another archaeological adventure.This year Tabitha's mom isn't sending for her though, and Tabitha is going to be stuck at her grandparents for the rest of the year, which means among other things, she is going to have to go to school!Can Tabitha survive the school year? Can she make friends? And what is her mother doing that means that she can't go with her?This was an okay story, but I did find some things difficult to believe.Tabitha was an okay character, she had a lot of life experience, and was fairly self-sufficient, but she wasn't really prepared for high school. I did find some of her claims a little far-fetched though. At the age 15 it seemed a little OTT that she was a black belt in Taekwondo, could fight with a stick and a sword, had birthed several babies in the bush, and knew loads of other random stuff. I know that she had obviously been to a lot of different places, and had real-life experience, but considering how little attention her mother paid to her, I just didn't buy that she had managed to do all these things by herself by the age of 15.The storyline in this book was okay, but again there were certain things that were just a little hard to believe. Her mother's true profession was one example, and there were several more that I don't want to talk about for fear of dropping spoilers. There were several moments when I just thought `What?' though, and this really did ruin the story.The ending was okay, but while I didn't guess one of the twists, I did guess most of what happened, and I thought that the book was quite predictable in places. I also thought the romance storyline was quite obvious too, and even though Tabitha's new best friend (who had a bad case of verbal diarrhoea) told her that she wouldn't be able to tame the resident Don Juan, Tabitha of course did.I did think that this was okay overall, but the hard to swallow bits really spoilt it, and the predictability also got annoying. If you can look past these less-believable parts, you could probably enjoy this story a lot more though.Overall; an okay YA contemporary mystery, but a little unbelievable in places.5 out of 10.