TITLE: Dragonfly
SERIES: Dragonfly #1
AUTHOR: Leigh T Moore
PUBLICATION DATE: June 6, 2013
PUBLISHER: All Night Reads
PAGES: 265 pages
FORMAT: E-ARC
SOURCE: NetGalley
RATING: 2 stars
Dragonfly follows Anna in her tumultuous relationship with the son of the town’s wealthiest business man. But the closer she gets to him, the more she realizes that though her body is saying yes, maybe her mind should be saying no…and that Julian, her artist friend may just be the perfect guy for her. Then she gets an internship at a local newspaper and is assigned to assist on a bicentennial story that brings up questions she doesn’t know the answers to, but is determined to find out.
I am currently having an internal debate over whether to give this two stars or three. Mainly I hate giving two stars, but I feel like this really deserves that. My biggest issue with the novel was the main character, Anna. She was so self-centered and immature and just stupid at times that I couldn’t sympathize with her at all. Watching her jump back and forth between Jack and Julian when it was clear that Julian was the better guy was not only irritating, but almost infuriating. First she thinks Julian is hot, but would never be interested in her….then he shows interest, but she meets Jack and he is oh so drool-worthy and she just has to have him, Julian be damned. But the whole time, Jack is doing that push and pull thing where he likes her, but doesn’t want a commitment and he keeps saying his life is too complicated to bring her into that shit, but you never really see it, besides the assholic father and older brother, his life doesn’t seem too bad. And Anna just goes on and on and on about Jack and how she can’t get him out of her head and then they split and she is all whiny and piney and Boohoohoo. I just found her whole personality grating. Maybe I’m too old for this kind of drama, but it all felt so fake and overdone to me. She bitches and moans in the beginning about Gabi, her best friend, moving away, but she barely speaks to her the whole book and WEEKS go by with no contact. When my best friend moved away in high school, we talked on the phone every fucking day (this was pre-text days) and she didn’t move far away, just far enough that she had to transfer schools.
The plot was extremely boring in the first half and then picks up in the second, when the mystery is finally introduced. Even though the mystery is so predictable that people with the reading comprehension of a middle schooler could see it coming. The writing style was okay, but a bit choppy.
I’m just so disappointed with this. I think it was supposed to be new adult, but it definitely doesn’t have that feel, despite the few failed attempts at sexy make-out scenes. Maybe I’ve been spoiled by too many greatly written NA’s, like Easy and The Secret Of Ella & Micha and Hopeless, but I just expected so much more from this. I really shouldn’t have been surprised considering this contains so many things I hate, love triangles, intsalove, whiny useless heroine, and a cliffhanger. For anyone out there curious, go ahead and give it a try, just tread cautiously!
****Thank you to All Night Read and Leigh Talbert Moore for providing me with an eARC via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review****
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