Genre: YA | Science Fiction | Fantasy
Publisher: Balzer + Bray
My rating:
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Sixteen-year-old Janelle Tenner is used to having a lot of responsibility. She balances working as a lifeguard in San Diego with an intense academic schedule. Janelle's mother is bipolar, and her dad is a workaholic FBI agent, which means Janelle also has to look out for her younger brother, Jared. And that was before she died... and is brought back to life by Ben Michaels, a mysterious, alluring loner from her high school. When she discovers a strange clock that seems to be counting down to the earth's destruction, Janelle learns she has twenty-four days to figure out how to stop the clock and save the planet.
Let me first tell you what I expected from this book when I picked it up.
- a whiny and stupid protagonist, who thinks she's so much better than everyone else
- a weak depiction of a mother with a bipolar disorder and a workaholic FBI father
- flat secondary characters
- cheesy insta-love
- stupid decisions about "saving the world"
- a predictable plot
I don't know why I picked it up, maybe because it has been on my tbr for so long, maybe I was just in the mood for a book with an apocalypse in it.
So after a couple of chapters I found myself actually liking the main character and the story.
Everything turned out so different from what I expected.
Honestly, yes, this book was kind of cliché, but I couldn't help but enjoy pretty much every single page of it.
The writing was flawless, and I love how the author handled all the issues.
The MC was neither weak nor whiny, and definitely not stupid. She was pretty smart about her decisions. She was funny and sarcastic too, she felt so real, like all the other characters in this book.
The romance... well it was insta-loveish, but it was tolerable. The thing is, I didn't particulary care about it, since it wasn't a huge part of the story.
About the the predictability, well some twist I saw coming, and other twist suprised me.
Altogether, I have to say this is a underrated YA book and that more people should read it. So if you're into YA sci-fi, you now what to do.
