DNF: Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi

Everyone has already read and reviewed this, so I'm going to skip the blurb and go
straight for the jugular.

I really wanted to read and love this book and the two others in the trilogy. The author, whom I’ve seen around on various blogs and Instagram, is so damn cute!  I’ve heard so much about the third novel especially, and I just wanted to spend an entire weekend loving the series for everything it was.

Yeah, that didn’t happen.







Here's why:

Fucking strikethroughs.   Way too many fucking strikethroughs.  They’re on every page.

Deep ass sentences that mean nothing: “I hate the lackadaisical ennui of a sun too preoccupied with itself to notice the infinite hours we spend in its presence.”   U wot m8?

Sentences that are just poorly constructed and bad: “So much everything all the things dead.”

Purposeful lack of punctuation like it’s cute: “Two three four fifty thousand pieces of feeling stab me in the heart, melt into drops of warm honey that soothe the scars in my soul.”  (Also, what?)

Oh yeah, and the author never spells out numbers except for one time, which was referenced above for lacking commas.  She even begins sentences with numbers:  “2 knocks at the door and we’re both on our feet, abruptly startled back into this bleak world.”

Done.  I can’t do it. I quit after reading only 60 pages.

The plot and characters?  Not a problem.  The bad writing is what makes this a DNF.

Rant: DNF - Aloha Also Means Goodbye by Jessica Rosenberg

Jo and Jordan tied the knot five years ago in a mud hut in the middle of Zambia far from all their friends and family. Now they're in Hawaii for a big wedding vow renewal ceremony elaborately planned by Jo's mother. There's just one small issue, there’s something wrong with the wedding license issued in Africa and only Jo knows.

Little does she know that the wedding license will soon prove to be the least of her problems.

Her ex, the man she was running from when she met Jordan, is on the island and he's there with his two kids, both of whom are named after her.

Coming face to face with her past just as she's trying to brave her future forces Jo to make some big decisions. It might even force her to grow up. Luckily she doesn't have to do any of it on her own; her two best friends are there to hold her hand and help her down the right path.

Despite all the upheaval and complications Jo will eventually walk down the aisle to say “I do” to the man who completes her. But will the wedding that takes place be the one Jo's mother planned? Or will it be something much, much better?  @Goodreads

Did not finish -- yikes!
Nothing, and I mean nothing, pains me more than discarding a novel once I decided to read it.  Yet this one here, I gladly threw down in utter disgust.

Note: I received an advanced copy from Netgalley, courtesy of the publisher. 

 I could not get into this book at all. Far-fetched and contrived. I abandoned ship very early on, because I didn't like the characters, and I had zero interest in finding out what happens. The protagonist is about to renew her wedding vows (yes, she's already married) with her husband in Hawaii. A remote area of Hawaii. And guess who is there? Her ex-boyfriend that broke her heart. With his young daughter from another woman. How does any of that sound desirable? If my ex just so happened to magically book a vacation in the same exact remote island at the same exact time I did, and he had broken my heart in the past and then had a KID, and not to mention I myself was already married, this is what I'd do: NOTHING. Bad plot.

 If anyone out there finished it -- did it get better?

Expected publication date:  N/A