TITLE: Lovely, Dark & Deep
AUTHOR: Amy McNamara
PUBLICATION DATE: October 16, 2012
PUBLISHER: Simon Pulse, a division of Simon & Schuster
PAGES: 342 pages
FORMAT: Ebook
SOURCE: PulseIt
RATING: 2 stars
So, one of my new year’s resolutions is to stop giving books higher ratings that I feel they deserve just because I feel bad about giving ratings less than 3 stars. I know that might not make sense, considering I have no problem ranting my head off about things I hate and have rated more than one novel 1 star. I typically give books that didn’t suit me 3 stars because they probably weren’t bad, I just didn’t care for it. Well starting now, I’ll assume (probably wrongly) that everyone who follows my reviews has similar tastes as me and would generally agree with my thoughts (or sometimes just likes to see thoughts different than their own) and start rating in a brutally honest fashion. The reviews themselves won’t change, but you may start seeing lower ratings.
So two stars for this novel. It follows Wren Wells as she tries to deal with the death of her boyfriend and the chaos of life in general. After the car accident that left her alive and him dead, she moves from her NY home with her mom to a cabin in the middle of the woods with her artist father to get some downtime. All her life crashes to a halt when she literally stops speaking. She stops seeing her friends, won’t leave the house, has no college plans. Now all she does is sit around her dads house and mope. Literally, that is all she does, that and run.
I started this with mediocrely high hopes (if that makes sense). I expected the story of a girl struggling to get over her boyfriend’s death. I expected to read about someone who WANTED to recover. But that just wasn’t the case. In her mopey moods, she manages to find someone with almost the same attitude towards life that she has adapted. Though the writer plays if off like this dude inspires her to do better, I just don’t see it. Mopey and grumpy with major issues of his own, Cal is far from the perfect leading man. Yeah, he does push her some, but mostly, he lets her do her own thing and gets mad over nothing.
Another reason this novel disappointed me was I HATED Wren. She’s so fucking selfish, I couldn’t sympathize with her at all. After the car accident, she curls into herself and pushes everyone away. She sees them trying to help her and makes fun of them in her inner monologue. She doesn’t try to contact the parents of her dead boyfriend, even though they show obvious concern for her well being, she won’t even speak to her best friend. Then in the “present day” of the story, she is just a bitch. When her dad gets a new art intern, Nick, she mean to him. Nick goes out of his way to try to keep her company or be nice to her, even accompanies her on a run and she fucking screams at him telling him that she doesn’t want or need his company, to go the hell away.
All in all, this book was just a disappointment. I wouldn’t have wasted my time on it if I had known, so I’m warning all of you. Just don’t bother.
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