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A review by mrswhiteinthelibrary
Instant Karma by Marissa Meyer
funny
informative
lighthearted
relaxing
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
A cute summer read overall. I appreciate that Meyer is doing something different here, but while I enjoyed this, I feel that's there's absolutely no reason this book is 400 pages long. And in fact I think it is so long because it feels like two different books entirely.
One is magical realism about a girl getting the ability to exact "instant karma" on people she thinks deserve it. The other one is a straight forward romcom between two high schoolers, one or whom works at a sea animal rescue, and the one who doesn't comes to care about the sea animals as much as the guy. Both are cute and fun but they seem like they could have been explored in different books.
That said, it is a sweet, chaste enemies to lovers that makes sense (they're teenagers so they're enemies in the sense that they didn't work well together as lab partners, which is way better than most examples of the trope) and the town and side characters are fleshed out really, really well. There's also a lot of actual knowledge about sea animals and what wild animal rescues do, which is genuinely very interesting.
So overall, pretty fun and decent and I may even read the sequel. It's certainly better than a lot of this genre. But just... Weirdly long and I think the author was doing too many things in exploring a new genre. But I don't regret the read either, and for a romcom, sometimes that enough.
One is magical realism about a girl getting the ability to exact "instant karma" on people she thinks deserve it. The other one is a straight forward romcom between two high schoolers, one or whom works at a sea animal rescue, and the one who doesn't comes to care about the sea animals as much as the guy. Both are cute and fun but they seem like they could have been explored in different books.
That said, it is a sweet, chaste enemies to lovers that makes sense (they're teenagers so they're enemies in the sense that they didn't work well together as lab partners, which is way better than most examples of the trope) and the town and side characters are fleshed out really, really well. There's also a lot of actual knowledge about sea animals and what wild animal rescues do, which is genuinely very interesting.
So overall, pretty fun and decent and I may even read the sequel. It's certainly better than a lot of this genre. But just... Weirdly long and I think the author was doing too many things in exploring a new genre. But I don't regret the read either, and for a romcom, sometimes that enough.