NOTE: I received this ARC from the author. Thank you!
For more of my reviews visit YA Story Teller

You know how there are books which, when you finish reading them, you like everything about them and you end up going over them again and again? And then there are those other books which, after reading them, you feel like you just wasted a good amount of time on them.

It's sad to say that in my opinion "The Year of the Great Seventh" belongs in the second category. I really wish it doesn't because the author is super nice, but ... it is what it is and I can't do anything about it.

So, my disliking of this novel began at the very first page and continued to the last one. I wasn't grabbed, you know? I even took notes in the margins of whatever was wrong, which has never happened before. *sigh*

There are several problems with the novel and here's the list I can remember:

1. Unnecessarily long descriptions, which are repeated two to three times in the span of a chapter. I thought this may be a one time thing, but no. It happens throughout the entire book. There are places where we're provided with information that doesn't concern us at all, and is repeated several times (re-worded, of course).

2. There's lack of time tracking. One moment we're in the now, the next (quite unpreparedly) we're 3 weeks in the future. Then we're given the short version of those 3 weeks (as if they weren't important) but it's clear that indeed they were important because it's in that time span that we could've gotten to know the characters and see how the relationships between them grow.

3. The entire novel is mostly (~80%) tell and only the rest is show. I am truly tired of repeating this, but here goes again: I actually want to see what happens to the characters instead of being told that such and such thing occurred. This is no freaking summary! When a girl gets together with a guy, I want to see it happen, not learn that oh, they've been together for the past month now. Seriously, what the h! This is the novel itself, so write it how it's supposed to be written!Nothing personal, Teresa.

4. The characters (and unfortunately I do mean ALL of them) lack depth, individuality, backbone, logical reasoning etc. The lead female, Sophie, doesn't ever react realistically in any situation. Nate, the bad boy, is more absorbed in himself than to pay attention to anyone else. Sophie's friends only think about partying and don't even know what's happening with her. In fact, that whole friendship thing feels a bit forced between them.

So, a little background here. Sophie has had a crush on Nate forever. Then he notices her and pushes her away. Then all of a sudden we're told they're together even though just a paragraph ago they were actively ignoring each other. And what do you know, an ancient Egyptian prophesy gets triggered by the sheer presence of Sophie near Nate. And to think that they'd been going to the same school for at least a couple of years... surely they had been in the same room at some point?

5. The supposed mystery/secret/whatever isn't very interesting at all. It wasn't explained understandably so I had no idea what was happening and why. I just felt kind of lost because everything seemed to be forced unnaturally together. There was no chemistry, if you like. No flow.

6. The writing style reminded me too much of National Geographic articles, where there's no emotion whatsoever. I think this is the main reason why I didn't feel any attachment toward a single character.

And here's where I am going to stop, even though there's a lot more to say. I just don't want to waste any more time on it. I'm really, truly sorry. ( )

I don't read a lot of YA books as a rule, I feel that I am too old at times to really be able to get into the story of teenagers. Once I started reading The Year of The Great Seventh it took me a bit to get into it, but I think that it was because of the fact that the author was setting up the characters. Since they were teenagers it took me awhile to grasp what was going on. I have always found ancient Egypt to be intriguing so once the story got past the introduction of the characters and it got into the supernatural aspect I found the story really taking off for me. The author weaves the lives of teenagers in Hollywood with Egyptian mythology to make the story interesting. Sophie to me seemed like a bit of an outsider who finds herself attracted to rich boy Nate, who seems to have anger issues. It is not until later in the story the reader finds out what and why he does have these issues. He seems to have inherited his issues from his grandfather, he thinks it is mental issues but this is where the mythology comes in and the reader finds out what is going on. Sophie and Nate go to New York to find answers to the clues that they find and it is a race to save Nate from evil. I enjoyed the story and look forward to reading the sequel! ( )

The Year of the Great Seventh is the story of Sophie and Nate. To say their relationship is dramatic is an understatement. In fact, I would say the first 2/3 of the book are Sophie obsessing about Nate. For that reason, I found Sophie really aggravating. It was like she had no sense of self and even when it was obvious there were bigger problems, she still stewed over her "relationship" with Nate. At least I had some sort of reaction to Sophie though. The rest of the characters, including Nate, never really made me care about what was happening to them.

This book was extremely slow paced and I hate to say, redundant. The clues were explained about 20 times. Sophie even has like 2 pages of the book where all she does is recount all the events that have happened up to that point. So, up until about the last 20 pages of the book, there is basically no action. Unfortunately, by the time the little bit of action got there, I had completely lost interest and was reading in autopilot mode.

I was looking through other reviews and they are somewhat mixed but overall positive. This book has 4.46 stars on Goodreads. Maybe, I just really missed something. I did like the Egyptian mythology aspect, but overall I honestly feel this book was lacking in many areas.

2 stars for The Year of the Great Seventh. ( )