Disclaimer: I was pretty excited to read this book. It seemed to have an interesting premise going for it. I had heard this book receive a book talk so I pretty pumped to read it. Then I started, and it had left a horrible after taste in my mouth of several other blahhhh books.
....so with that, an amazon summary, "At sixteen, Molly is a girl who's just started living-at last she's popular. But for a girl who has everything, Molly feels like she never has enough. So she steals. At least there's plenty of time to fix this last little problem.
Suddenly dead and in denial, how can Molly move on when life was just looking up? Can she abandon her earthly ties or will she jeopardize her soul to stay close to her loved ones?
From critically acclaimed author Kristen Tracy, Death of a Kleptomaniac is the heartfelt story of one girl's search for redemption, a family's encounter with grief, and love's power to rise above even the most final of boundaries." AMAZON LINK OF JUSTICE
The book begins with a kind of quirky introduction to Molly, but it starts to spiral out of control.
Some basic things we learn about Molly: she left her best friend Sadie to move up on the popularity ladder and joined a dance team of some sort. She's a kleptomaniac who's bound and determined to snag a boy for some under the sheets action. She's debating with herself between two guys (one has a tricky situation, the other is just appealing for some reason).
AHEM. Dear books that contain 'romantic aspects', YOUR BOOK DOES NOT NEED SOME WEIRD LOVE TRIANGLE. YOU CAN JUST HAVE SOME LOVE. GEEZ. Or no love. These are better options. It's annoying when I come across a love square, but I LOATHE it when books attempt a love pentagon; it just doesn't work out for ANYONE. EVER. Any more than that and I'm not reading it to begin with most likely. The sneak attack love shapes are always the trickiest to dodge!
Anyways.
So Molly becomes kind of a flat character as she 'struggles' with who she was versus who she wants to be; who she's striving to be. There are moments where she has to remind herself that what she's got now is what she wants, that she wants to keep making something of herself on a piece of paper so she'll having something to reminisce about when she's old.
But she has these moments where she seems to try the 'coast' method once more that really wanted me to smack the book about to see if that'd knock some sense into her.
VERY AGGRAVATING.
However, I'd never harm a book. So no books were harmed in this reading adventure.
When Molly actually dies (I feel this is NOT a spoiler as the title is Death of a Kleptomaniac) the book seems to take on some vague aspects of The Five People You Meet In Heaven.
I couldn't do it.
I could not do it after having to read The Five People You Meet In Heaven and to dissect it so often throughout my high school career and then further in my college career.
Nope nope nope. Could not push through it.
It seems like instead of The Five People You Meet In Heaven it was going for the angle of The People You Stalk When You Die (That's not a book as far as I know).
So I called it quits.
It could have been awesome and full of life lessons, but there was too much unexplained struggle and the writing came across as really awkward. Any time a character had to do something it was like, "I should get out of the car. I got out of the car. Now I'm talking to what's their face some 100 yards away." Very blocky and not conducive writing.
There were a lot of little things that irked me about the book but there was nothing that compelled me to finish reading the book once it started to feel all too familiar. After about a week of trying (wasted reading time really), I had enough.
On to the next book!
Happy reading!
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