Elena

Might be the worst book I've read in a while. I honestly hated a few other books I read but this one I think takes the cake. What a huge waste of time. I had to keep putting it down and picking it back up and putting it down again. The characters have no depth to them, the whole thing was completely predictable. I hated the main character. She was just so messed up, I get that people don't have to have their life together but her thought process read like she was 13 years old and had not life experience what-so-ever. I could see this being targeted at maybe that tween audience but for an adult, it just made me hate myself for wasting time on it.

The story itself was just so boring and drawn out, there wasn't really anything really interesting about it at all. This was supposed to be a book about how no one's life is perfect and the struggles of this girl living in London, but then, magically, everything works out! What a miracle! Well life does NOT work that way.

Please if you haven't read it yet, don't waste your time!

This book made me angry. I do think that it was well written, and as I come from a family that was pretty poor when I was younger (not as bad as them of course) I did not feel like it was made up. I could very easily believe that everything that happened would happen with an alcoholic parent and another who clearly had some kind of mental illness.

It made me angrier and angrier as I read all of the things that kept happening. How the parents kept destroying every chance and opportunity they had. The ending made me downright furious.

I have to say that I sat down and actually read the book when I heard that the movie was coming out soon. I also found the ending to be believable (the fact that she forgave her parents) due to the fact that they basically ruined relationships for this girl. She clearly did not get what it was like to be loved and settled down with the first man who took care of her and gave her a comfortable life, later getting divorced.

As much as I really wanted to find out what happens at the end, I still felt like I didn't care much about the other children. I kept forgetting about the youngest girl altogether.

The part about Ox the piggy bank was very predictable and I was just counting down the pages until the dad stole the money to buy himself some booze. I felt that part might have been dragged out a little bit as we all (I think) knew what was coming.

I have to start off this review by saying that I am really not a fan of dystopian books, shows or movies so I may be a little biased.

When Wade found the first Easter Egg I was so excited. I thought “heck yes, the action is about to begin!”. Well, I was pretty disappointed to find out that the rest of the book was just going to be slow and him basically worshiping this girl who he has never met and being self-deprecating.

Another point that bothered me was that he went from being a guy who lived in the dumps to getting the most expensive hotel room and putting in these magic walls that are essentially impenetrable. I get that we are supposed to see him as scrappy due to the fact that he was still able to get to the OASIS even though he was some super poor kid but the jump just seemed very unrealistic.

Overall the story was fine, but very predictable.

DNF

I read to 1/5 of the book and I put it down and realized I would never pick it back up again. I got that far in it and realized that not much has even happened. I loved Stardust by Gaiman so I figured I would really enjoy this! I was very wrong. There was just way too much descriptions of the surroundings and seemingly useless information. I had no respect for the main character. I generally dislike when it's hard to tell what's real and what isn't and in this book I was just waiting for him to tell me that every single thing he saw was not real. It was just too difficult to continue. I was warned about this book but figured I would give it the benefit of the doubt.