Review - "Something In Between"

Something In Between
by Melissa de la Cruz
rating:☆☆☆
published: 6th October 2016
spoilers? a bit

Goodreads

Galley provided by publisher

For me, this book suffered simply because I wasn't in the mood for it when I first started reading it. I'd come off the back of two really good murder mysteries and so that's what I wanted to read. And then I hit a reading slump which did not help this book's case. I thought maybe if I made myself read this book, it'd work some magic and get rid of the reluctance I felt about reading it. That was not the case.

My major issue, and probably the reason I didn't enjoy this book as much as I wanted to, was that I didn't like the writing style. On occasion, it felt stilted and the speech sometimes felt a little unrealistic - there were a couple of points where a character felt like a mouthpiece for an information dump, but that I understand given the topic of the book, and its likely audience. It was the parts where it wasn't an info dump, where the speech appeared a bit contrived, though thankfully these numbered not that many.

Another problem I found was that the romance between Royce and Jasmine was just a little on the wrong side of instalove for my liking. They meet once, exchange numbers straightaway (if someone came up to you and said you're pretty, can I have your number - or something along those lines - would you say yes?), text for a bit, and the next time they meet they're kissing. That being said, they were cute, so I can mostly forgive the instalove. But then there was also the seemingly constant "get together followed by break up and Jasmine hurting Royce followed by a get together then they break up again and the cycle repeats" going on. (I exaggerate, it only happened twice.) And also the "knowing she's the One" thing. Hmm.

The book dragged a little too much for me to fully like it - the only part where I wasn't counting the pages go by was about 70 pages from the end where all of a sudden I got into it - which was frustrating. There were parts of it I would rate 3 or 4 stars, but these interspersed parts where it was too slow for me and I would rate it 2 or maybe even 1 stars. That being said, I would still rec it, because it's an important book and story.