Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Let me be very clear: whenever I buy a book, I *want* to love it. I will ignore almost any weaknesses in a story if the story itself is good enough. A couple of plot holes, a ridiculous romance, irritatingly similar characters - these things register, but are (for me) easily overlooked. I could not make it halfway through this book before I just gave it (and the other Cassandra Clare book I was reading alongside it) to someone else. Apart from these, there has only been one other book in my entire reading career that I couldn't finish. This book was not smart, it was not funny, and failed absolutely to capture any kind of atmosphere (which is what matters the most to me). The characters were boring and immature and *so* predictable. To put it in perspective, let me say this: To my slight shame, I've read all the Twilight series. They weren't my favorite - and I definitely did not enjoy Bella as a heroine - but for all Stephanie Meyers' authorial shortcomings, she did a very good job with creating and maintaining a tone. The environment, Bella's voice, character interactions: they all painted a distinct picture, and the series had a definite *feel* to it. No matter how good or bad the story was (and let's be honest...it was pretty terrible), when you started reading it, it removed you from your surroundings because the atmosphere was solid. And when a book does that well, how they do it is indescribable; you can't pinpoint any one thing that makes it that way, because *everything* is that way, and it is that way seemingly effortlessly. But this book was trying way, way, way too hard to succeed at anything. When you're relying on something like four or five long, dark similes and/or metaphors per page, while the main characters are supposed to be crisp and edgy - the whole thing comes off as contrived and unnatural. What I'm saying is that while it's true that I do read snotty intellectual books, I also have no problem reading and enjoying absolute trash - and this book was so forced and not thought out, even I couldn't enjoy it. Though it is worth noting that if someone made a movie out of this, I'd totally go see it because I know the kind of movie it would be, and it would be loads of fun to watch. Just not to read.