emma's Reviews > Something About Her

for me, this book was love at first sight (that cover! girls falling in love at the university of edinburgh!)...and dislike at first read.

unfortunately, this is just not well written. that feels like the meanest criticism there is, but there's no avoiding it here. this book uses synonyms for said, is teeming with appearance descriptions, and has darlings on every page that likely should have been killed.

and this extends, sadly, to plot: everything seems to be going really quite well, and then suddenly someone does something quite unforgivable, out of nowhere and inexplicably. less than ten pages later the book ends. that's after hundreds of pages of what feels like flippant, underexplored inclusion of a dozen serious social issues.

i wish it could, but debut doesn't begin to explain it all away: this was under-edited by a lot. it feels tropey, shallow, cliched, and i came away thinking i needed more and less at once.

bottom line: if you don't have anything nice to say, you shouldn't say anything at all...but i really wanted to like this book.

(thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)