Location: United States
Member Since: March 11, 2012

Jennifer

Smashwords book reviews by Jennifer

  • Blue Sky Days on April 02, 2012

    I really wanted to like this book. The summary sounded full of promise: young girl struggles to find herself after years of oppression from her mother, meets a young man and eventually has to help him through an extremely difficult situation. However, shortly into the story I knew it was going to be a struggle to finish. Emma left her home to live with her aunt Daisy after realizing that she will never live up to her overbearing mother's expectations. Her goal was to find herself and figure out what she wanted to do with her life. She rarely made any effort to do so though, instead she relied on Daisy and Nicholas and his friends to lead her around and make many of her decisions for her. Additionally, other than Emma, who is whiny and appears very ignorant, all of the characters are so perfect that they are completely unrealistic. Even the town is perfect with it's drive-in theater, 50's style diner and meticulous homes. I found it very difficult to relate to the characters or setting and therefore had no connection with them or reason to care what happened. Emma's relationship with Nicholas is also too corny and contrived to be believable. All the gazing into each other's eyes and holding hands and sharing their life stories for pages and pages and pages was very dull to read about. There was absolutely no conflict to keep me interested. As bad as it sounds, I was looking forward to Nicholas' cancer diagnosis just to bring something more substantial to the story line. As I have been both a cancer patient and a caregiver for a family member battling the disease I am very particular about details when a book uses the illness as a plot point. I did not have high hopes for the author's ability to convey all the aspects of the disease and treatment accurately when they rest of the book had been written through such a rose-colored filter. However, I was mildly surprised at how the diagnosis and treatment was handled. Although it doesn't appear that the author did much research into treating leukemia at least there were actual side effects from the chemo, both physically and emotionally. The characters were allowed to be less than perfect and the story was more readable, at least for a while. Unfortunately, the plot "twist" was predictable and ruined by the cheesy way it was resolved. The story once again turned saccharine sweet and annoying and it was with great relief that I finally finished the book. I wish I could say that I enjoyed this book because I admire anyone who has the courage to produce a story and put it out there for other people to read and hopefully be entertained.