The Collector
This was me waiting for this book to come out:
This was me at the beginning of this book:
This was me at the end of the book:
I suppose I should start at the beginning because I’m having trouble sorting out my thoughts here. Based on the blurb I’d read I expected this book to be intense. I didn’t expect it to be funny but surprisingly it was, at least in the beginning. The story opens with Dante in New Orleans and we get a peek into his mind. He’s self absorbed and overconfident. Hypothetically that arrogance would annoy me. In actuality I thought it was done with enough humor to make it charming and the fact that he could admit to his weaknesses (fear of cats, which he describes as having “creepy little teeth and finger blades”) brought him back down to earth for me and made him likeable.
Onto the story. I loved the premise. I thought it was a fresh take on the whole heaven/hell, angels/demons paradigm. I loved the fact that Charlie was a “Nerd Alert”. She’s your typical teenager caught smack dab in the middle of her awkward phase, complete with acne, glasses, frizzy hair and poor fashion sense. She also has a huge heart and the potential to affect a lot of people’s lives with her vision of a more charitable future.
I was so excited for the dynamic between these two because Dante is the type of boy most teenage girls would throw themselves at and Charlie is the type of girl that most teenage boys don’t even see. I wanted Dante to see her, to see the beauty beneath her skin and fall in love with her quirky personality, her ever present smiles and her huge heart. Sadly, things didn’t quit happen the way I wanted them to.
I think everything started going wrong for me when Dante was able to convince her she needed to be beautiful. After that, I frowned a lot. I started having more issues but I won’t go into them because they’d be spoilers and I want to let people form their own opinions.
I just…ugh. This book had so much potential and I just felt like it didn’t live up to it.
This was me at the beginning of this book:
This was me at the end of the book:
I suppose I should start at the beginning because I’m having trouble sorting out my thoughts here. Based on the blurb I’d read I expected this book to be intense. I didn’t expect it to be funny but surprisingly it was, at least in the beginning. The story opens with Dante in New Orleans and we get a peek into his mind. He’s self absorbed and overconfident. Hypothetically that arrogance would annoy me. In actuality I thought it was done with enough humor to make it charming and the fact that he could admit to his weaknesses (fear of cats, which he describes as having “creepy little teeth and finger blades”) brought him back down to earth for me and made him likeable.
Onto the story. I loved the premise. I thought it was a fresh take on the whole heaven/hell, angels/demons paradigm. I loved the fact that Charlie was a “Nerd Alert”. She’s your typical teenager caught smack dab in the middle of her awkward phase, complete with acne, glasses, frizzy hair and poor fashion sense. She also has a huge heart and the potential to affect a lot of people’s lives with her vision of a more charitable future.
I was so excited for the dynamic between these two because Dante is the type of boy most teenage girls would throw themselves at and Charlie is the type of girl that most teenage boys don’t even see. I wanted Dante to see her, to see the beauty beneath her skin and fall in love with her quirky personality, her ever present smiles and her huge heart. Sadly, things didn’t quit happen the way I wanted them to.
I think everything started going wrong for me when Dante was able to convince her she needed to be beautiful. After that, I frowned a lot. I started having more issues but I won’t go into them because they’d be spoilers and I want to let people form their own opinions.
I just…ugh. This book had so much potential and I just felt like it didn’t live up to it.
3
