Reviews tagging 'Blood'

Once and for All by Sarah Dessen

1 review

sofiajearally's review

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hopeful slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

1.75

This book was so fucking dumb.

I'm not happy to say it because I've always loved, or at least liked, Sarah Dessen's books. This Lullaby was one of my favorite books when I was a teen. Maybe it's just that I'm not a teen anymore, maybe I'm too old for this. Or maybe the book is bad.

Okay, so we follow Louna, who can't get over her ex-boyfriend Ethan. She meets Ambrose and then it's your usual hate-to-love romance. There's really nothing else. There's barely even a plot!! And some elements of that "plot" are not believable one bit (like
Natalie hiring Ambrose
or
Louna having her first time on the beach at night with someone she met 3 hours ago
) or are disgusting (like the bet, which essentially means using other people to get what they want - each other). The only interesting thing was the wedding planner stuff.

Alright, maybe the plot is not the most important part of a romance book but there was no chemistry either!!! Louna and Ambrose are better off as friends. Which makes me think: I hate that there is no woman/man relationship other than romantic ones, except for William and Natalie, but they had to make him gay for that to happen!

The characters are one-dimensional as hell and William is clearly a gay token which is ewww.
  • I thought Louna wasn't too annoying at the very beginning but yep, she is in fact irritating. She has no personality except being "not like other girls" because she's cynical about love and
    her boyfriend of a day died
    . GIRL IT AIN'T THAT DEEP. You're 17, you don't know anything. Can we also talk about the sexist moments towards other girls? That made me roll my eyes so far back I thought I was going blind.
  • Ambrose is annoying from start to finish; he's a player and I do not believe that lOUna ChANgeD hIM (and him having ADHD is not supposed to be a redeeming quality). I don't get why we're supposed to root for him, and to be honest I wasn't.
  • As for Ethan,
    I liked him, too bad he's dead.

The writing is fine but there are some of the stupidest, cringiest sentences I've ever read, like: "They fit me perfectly" (Louna, about her sandals), like OBVIOUSLY GIRL YOU BOUGHT THESE SHOES LAST YEAR??? Can someone also tell Ms. Dessen that people don't blush all the damn time? That was annoying as hell.
Some tropes that I hate were also there: "I DIn'T nOTIce WE haD CHEmisTRy" ; "date is suddenly turned into an asshole because he's a threat to the romance" (NEWSFLASH: you can have heterosexual people of opposite genders not date/not be attracted to each other while still being polite).

The structure was also weird toward the end, with chapter 25 (where
Ambrose and Louna reconcile
) being randomly put in the middle of the day before Louna's birthday, while it actually happened before that day. I took 10 minutes to go back and forth, trying to figure out the timeline, even though this book, which could have been 60 pages shorter, was already a colossal waste of time. And what was that
fake-ass suspense
at the end?
(Of course Ambrose is alive! Although it would have been more interesting if he wasn't.)

I'm definitely too old for this shit. The only people I would recommend this book to are 16-year-olds who still think fairytales exist and think they're deep AF when they haven't lived anything difficult in their life. And even then, I wouldn't encourage them. "I hoped that they would always prioritize their partner before everything else." Honestly, what kind of message is this sending to young girls? NO. You have to prioritize yourself for goodness sake.
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