Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I bought this book without having heard much about it. I am not attached to love stories or Sci-Fi Fantasy, so I wasn't expecting it to fulfill any expectations on those levels; I just found the subject matter different and intriguing. I ended up having to work hard to get through it because I really felt like the writing and the characters were flat. I have read a couple of reviews below saying that they couldn't tell the difference between the narratives of the two main characters of the book and I had the same problem. I often had to check back to the beginning of the narrative to see who was talking. To me that is very poor character development, something that is intrinsic to a good book. One main point that bothered me was the fact that when the characters are young in the book, 20-30, they seemed like they were much too old and serious for people that age. I feel like she glommed on the fact that the main characters and her friends all liked punk music as an attempt to make them seem younger, but no one I have ever known at these stages in their lives have acted like these characters and actually the Punk friends I had growing up would have hated them because they are from affluent backgrounds with painfully pseudo-intellectual attitudes. To add to this, the ethnic characters in this book from black to Hispanic were overly stereotyped, something that I cannot stand, it made me think that the Author has very little experience or understanding of other cultures or races. I also felt that a lot of the dialog was forced and didn't flow like a regular conversation, much of it seemed unnecessary and out of place. I ended up not caring or being able to relate to any of the characters and regret purchasing this book.