Ruby Red

– DNF at 80% –

Back in 2009 I got this book as a birthday present in german. I began it and laid it away after two or three chapters. I wasn't captivated by it and blamed it on my reading habit back in the day (which was mainly time travelling and sci-fi). So it began to gather dust on my bookshelf until a month ago. I picked it up und began to read all over. But I didn't get far. Three quarters in now I am so frustrated with this book that I will stop it now and plan on never take it in my hands ever again. Here are the reasons why:

I can not stand the main protagonist. She behaves sometimes like a 5 year old, sometimes like 12 years old but NEVER according or near her age, which is 16 almost 17. She's naive, dumb and changes her world view every two sentences, particularly in the middle of the book where she is thinking about who she can and who she cannot trust.
The love story was predictable and very weird since Gwendolyn has no steady thoughts and changes between girly-oh-my-god-boys-are-so-cool-mode and i-am-not-interested-mode back and forth (at least up to the point where I have read).
Also the writing style was not my cup of tea. For me it's a weird mix of easy and complex words and sentences which kept my stumbling over the words although I am a native german reader. It felt quite... forced. The jokes are, in my opinion, as stupid as hell and also quite forced. Even in passages where explainations are done there are always jokes interspersed which took out the seriousness of the topic for me.
I tried to read the english translation and must say it fits the theme better than the original german version, at least in my opinion.

If you haven't read many time travelling books and do not mind having a supernaive protagonist, then this could be for you. But for me, it ends here.