Review of Begin Again by Brittney Mulliner

This read like Clueless, with a healthy dose of suspense thrown in. (I loved Clueless, so that is a good thing.) It was a fascinating look into a world I have no experience with and don't relate to, since not only has it been decades since I was a teenager, but I grew up lower middle class in Oregon, which is culturally a world away from SoCal. 

 

That being said, I felt like these kids were well drawn and real. Their actions and reactions felt believable to me. The pacing was pretty good. Just about every time I was getting too bored, a breadcrumb back to the suspense would drop. So the storyline was good, as a YA novel.

However...the execution about left a lot to be desired. There were run-on sentences that left me breathless, and the switches in narrative tense took me right out of the bubble. Wrong word choices and missing words, too. Drove the editor in me to distraction. I never got to a point where I could just read and relax into the story.

I will be reading book 2, since this one ended on such a cliffie, and I'm interested to know what happens. I won both of them in a contest back in December. Not sure I would have bought them...

I'm waffling on my star rating. Very tempted to knock off a half star for the "technical difficulties" with this one, but my enjoyment of the story has me hanging on to the 4. Maybe I'll call it 3.75.

Reading Progress

12/29 page 49 "I'm thinking contemporary YA is not my cuppa. I have no idea why I should care about Aubrey, so far. I won this in a giveaway, so bear that in mind - I'll try to be fair. My only other comment at this time: can we say run-on sentences? Oh my." 01/14 page 119 "Gawd. It reminds me of high school. Which I suppose is a good thing, since it is a book about high school."