Publisher: Flux
Series: NA
Star Rating: 3 out of 5
Page Amount: 240
Age Group: Young Adult
To Forrest Shephard, getting away to the family's beach house with her parents and her brother, Brian, is the best part of every summer. Until this year, when her mother invites Brian's obnoxious girlfriend, Olivia, to join them. Suddenly, Forrest's relaxing vacation becomes a mission to verify the reality of Olivia's rumoured eating disorder. But the truth behind Olivia's finicky eating isn't at all what Forrest expected. And over the next thirty days, Forrest's world is turned upside down as her family's darkest secrets begin to come to light.
*I received a free e-copy of this novel from Netgalley in exchange for a honest, unbiased review.*
Considering that this book is not too lengthy, and I read it over Dewey's 24 hr readathon, I will begin this review by saying that this book was not a difficult read at all. I did enjoy it, however I did have a few issues with the story and the context in it.
Firstly, this novel is by no means a fluffy contemporary read. This is not a stereotypical romance, which is what I got the impression when I first went into the story completely blind, and is why I actually chose to read it in the first place. This book deals with many dark themes, one of them being eating disorders. In my opinion, they dealt with these themes extremely dismissively. The topic was there, and then the next paragraph it was gone and the protagonist was going off about something else. I did not appreciate that about the novel, especially since the themes are no joke and should have been taken more seriously than they were.
I did not find very many characters in this novel appealing. I found Forrest to be immature, and in the beginning of the novel she didn't even make an effort to act nice to her brother's girlfriend. I mean, come on, is it that hard to play nice every once in awhile? Also, she was so dependent on this one specific character in the novel, who, may I add, she had only met with a few select times during the entire novel. I could understand it a little bit, but it got so extreme that to a point it just got irritating.
While I did have some major issues with this book, I wouldn't say that I didn't enjoy reading it. I really did, and it was a nice book to have a breather with during the 24 hour readathon. I just wish that some things would have been fixed that weren't, but overall I did enjoy this book.
