"As far as I’m concerned, I came out of the womb spouting cynicism and wishing for rain."

"As far as I’m concerned, I came out of the womb spouting cynicism and wishing for rain."

A while back, I read an online comic strip by the same author, Heartstopper Volume 1. I found it by chance and I literally flew through it. I adored it and I went ahead and TBR’d some of her other books. I found this one on Scribd and come to find this was her baby. This was her debut novel. The story was pretty good, it is NOT a love story, but I sometimes found myself getting frustrated with the main character. Reasons why are listed below.

The story is told from a teenager named Victoria ‘Tori’ Spring. She has two younger brothers and she is quite…indifferent. She has one best friend, and honestly one friend only, and she’s very much the pessimist. I can’t fully fault her for that, but some things that I just CANNOT tolerate. I found myself gasping and GLARING at the words as I read them.

She hates books. Yes, she said she hates books (-1 point). She knows the name of each book and the author who wrote them, but she won’t actually read them.

Though she loves film so I’ll give the point back to her (0).

"When you watch a film, you’re sort of an outsider looking in. With a book – you’re right there. You are inside. You are the main character."

She thinks Pride and Prejudice is ridiculous and boring…she gets positive points for that (+2) – I’m sorry I’m in the minority. I do not care for Jane Austen and find her so called romance novels dull and boring. Not sorry!

She despises Disney because the movies are total fake and unrealistic. WELL NO SHIT! It’s DISNEY! (-200) – I’m a Disney nerd and while I don’t agree with sugar coating the original fair tales, I still LOVE Disney. You can’t fault me for that!

Anyway…

Tori is highly cynical and while I can appreciate that in her, sometimes she made my favorite cartoon character, Daria, seem like a sweetheart. Two guys come into Tori’s life. One was an old childhood friend, Lucas, and the other is someone she met before, Michael. At the same time, a blog group called ‘Solitaire’ starts making trouble…almost in Tori’s honor.

I won’t go into great detail, mostly because I would definitely give more away than I want to. I breezed through this story quickly, but there are just some things in the story that just didn’t sit well with me.

This guy Lucas was so sketchy that he nearly drove Tori crazy with his change in personality.

Her parents…they literally do not seem to care. Her mother most of all. She is mostly on her computer and seems to kind of be absent, mentally, as a parental figure. That never gets resolved, and I don’t know if that’s a good thing or bad thing. In the end, it really bothered me at how disinterested her parents really were. I get that perhaps it’s something you do when you’re bringing up teenagers, but damn!!

"I swear to God I’m a freak! I mean it. One day I’m going to forget how to wake up."

You’re probably thinking that this really doesn’t seem like it would be in the mental health genre. It is. Tori goes through an awful lot in this story, not to mention the mental strain with her brother, Charlie. I will say there are some MILD trigger warnings regarding implied self harm.

I was kind of left with mixed emotions with this book. I have great respect for this author and this being her first story. I know it’s near and dear to her heart. I wouldn’t say that this was at the top of my list, but it’s not at the bottom either. I definitely appreciated it NOT BEING a love story. Although it seemed like it would, despite the subtitle of the book, but I’m glad it wasn’t.

Edition	Unknown
ISBN	9780007559220
Language	English

9-10			50.0% (1)
7-8			50.0% (1)
5-6			0.0% (0)
3-4			0.0% (0)
1-2			0.0% (0)

Solitaire

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