Not a long while ago, I was the kind of person who couldn’t let a book unfinished, no matter how much boring or awful it might be, I made it a matter of life or death, a take on my honor, but now I just don’t give a damn.

The writing made my head hurt, or more specifically the heroine’s (I forgot her name) way of talking, it was hard to follow and I wasn’t in the mood either to decipher and decrypt what she was saying. I couldn’t keep with her and I just gave up, the whole book is narrated in the first person and my patience has limits.

Now I know that when I put a book five times in less than one hour, then it’s my cue for: Not-going-to-finish-it(let alone like it)-even-in-a-million-years. Damn you awesome books for making me this picky and fastidious.
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So apparently I went two for two on young adult reads this weekend.

Told in the first person, we have Marisa ready to start her sophomore year in high school. Marisa had a bad year as a freshman when she suffered from depression and anxiety. Now she is happy to start a new year where she can wipe the slate clean and finally find a boyfriend to fall in love with.

I thought that honestly way too many serious things that were going on were just ignored so we could focus on Marisa being obsessed with a boy she wasn't even dating. When Marisa finally gets the romantic entanglement she wants, the rest of the book is her feeling dissatisfied with it (the grass is always greener) and doing things that 100 percent labeled her a stage five clinger.

There was sadly no development of any other characters in this book either. We get Marisa's best friend Sterling, her sister, her mother and father, her aunt, and the boy next door, Nash.

There was a lot going on in this book which sadly led to not everything being treated with equal weight and me personally feeling bored by focusing most of the story on Marisa's search for her soulmate. It didn't help that the author included a similar plot-line to the movie, Pump Up the Volume that just did not work for this book at all. I think I was supposed to be all amazed by what the mysterious podcaster was saying about being a teenager. Christian Slater was there first ladies and gentlemen, you are never touching that.

I seriously at one point just kind of laughed, because I used to watch this movie at least once every couple of weeks when I was a teenager and there were a lot of references to things this mysterious character (not really) was saying that were similar to Christian Slater's movie character.

The writing was okay but the flow was pretty bad from beginning to end. There were serious things happening in Marisa's life that would be referred to chapters later.

When the ending happened I guess I was supposed to be all hip hip hooray but I just rolled my eyes. Oh high school, when you sat and thought that every guy/girl was the one. ( )

This isn't a book that will make you guess how it will end. It's a happy book with a happy end and you pretty much know that right off the bat. However, it is an easy read. It's one of those fuzzy feeling books that makes you feel all good inside. Therefore, I liked it. ( )

I found that I was able to tell the ending of this story before it happened, but it was interesting to read an author that I have never read before. I'll have to try reading another by this author and see if I enjoy it ( )

I picked this up after flipping through [b:So Much Closer|8492805|So Much Closer|Susane Colasanti|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1286325931s/8492805.jpg|13358342] at work and generally liking what I read. I liked it well enough to go and grab one of Colasanti’s earlier books. Unfortunately, there wasn’t as much pep and funny to grab me with Waiting for You.

A huge problem with the book is the pacing, especially with the first third of the book. The chapters were extremely erratic, switching between what was going on in the plot and having Marisa pontificate on her interests and feelings. It felt jarring and took me out of the plot. The chapters whenever Marisa went off about her interests and life didn’t really gel with the others. She would go on for about five pages about why she did photography, or why she absolutely had to practice her violin in the bathroom. While it’s not a laundry list of characteristics and we see her doing and enjoying some of her hobbies, I wanted to see their introduction integrated more into the story itself, not getting a whole chapter with a tiny bit of plot development.

There’s also the issue that a lot of these chapters serve solely to introduce secondary characters, again, with no previous set-up. For example, Marisa’s little sister Sandra gets randomly introduced in chapter five, with no prior mention. (Heck, we’re not told she’s the younger sister until about a page and a half in.) Aunt Katie is another character who just gets a random introduction, with little to no build-up, and in fact, I thought could have been completely cut from the story.

It’s also this random, sprawling writing style that made me dislike Marisa as our main character. I can’t get a real grasp on who she’s supposed to be—is she an artist? Normal high school girl? Someone trying to get over past issues? There’s at least one or more mentions of everything that she does, but it never defines Marisa. Also, her interests really don’t show anything more to her character. There are scenes scattered throughout the book where Marisa describes taking photos and why she likes doing it, but the only reason it feels like she’s a photographer is so she can discover that her dad’s moving out. Then, it’s randomly dropped that she has an anxiety disorder and has been getting over a year-long bout of depression. While this would have helped for great characterization, it doesn’t feel realistic. First, side tangent on the fact that Marisa claims that she doesn’t go to therapy anymore. I don’t know what this says about Marisa or her parents, but depression does not work that way. There’s no easy cure-all, and if Marisa actually had an anxiety disorder, she would have been recommended to get help and medication.

The love story is barely interesting. Once Marisa hooks up with Derek, it feels like he was leading her on the whole time and we never get to see the side of him that complimented Marisa on her artwork. His ex-girlfriend is there to be catty and bitchy and only wants to steal him back. I’m a little bit more interested in Nash, but there’s not much that we see to him, and it’s so obviously set up that he’s Dirty Dirk the podcaster. There’s no real build-up to either love interest.

The only major plotline that goes anywhere interesting is Marisa’s parents splitting up, and even then, there’s not much done with it. Marisa indulges in a lot contrived drama—she hates her father, he’s must have obviously cheated on her mother; oh no, her mother had the affair, now what is she supposed to do? The fact that her mother purposefully delays telling either one of her daughters about what’s happening also pissed me off—I know divorces and affairs are really messy, especially when dealing with the kids’ reactions, but her mother’s excuses of how everything happened so fast and “I just want to be happy for me!” felt contrived and plot convenient. Also, the resolution of Marisa starting to forgive her mother felt too rushed and way too easy.

Overall, it’s not a very good book. It’s not terrible, but the bland nature of the plot and the drama was way too convenient to fit the plot needs. Also, the handling of teen depression is really bad. I may have to give her other books a full read, but I probably won’t be picking up any more of Susane Colasanti anytime soon.
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