TaylorCaitlin

I received this book in a Goodreads First Reads giveaway.

When I was little I used to love the Olsen twin movie, "It Takes Two," and my favorite part of that movie was when the evil future step-mom, Clarisse, would describe something as "aaaabsoluuuutely adoooorable." Every time the word absolutely was used in this book, which was often (like every page), I kept reading it like that and it made the book so much more entertaining, although annoying.

The Year of the Great Seventh isn't a bad book, by any means. Indeed, it reads much better than many other independently published books I've read through the Goodreads First Reads program. It tells the story of Hollywood teen Sophie who falls in love with the school's popular bad boy Nate and discovers something weird is starting to happen to them. Through Sophie's love of history and Egyptian mythology, she discovers their lives are tangled in a prophecy related all the way back to Cleopatra and Marc Anthony and they set off to solve the riddle and save his life. While the end of the book picks up speed immensely, the beginning was brutal. Page after page after page descriptions of high school parties, pointless chats with friends, and full life stories of minor characters that have no impact on the plot whatsoever. Then there were the random tangents…like Sophie's college tour of NYU where she meets several more unnecessary characters that have no other purpose than making her question her feelings for Nate…which pretty much goes against the theme since the whole book was about how much Sophie loved Nate.

And on that note, I just can't stand when authors of the Young Adult genre don't take a minute to step back and look at what they've written from the point of view of their reader. This book's target audience is definitely teenage girls who want to read about high school drama, romance, and mystery, but here's the unfortunate underlying theme, described perfectly in a quote from page 227:

"Professor Silverman's words, my future, my parents, my friends, my grades, and my life were swirling out of control, but there was only one person able to keep it all together: Nate."

Yeah, we get it, they're in love and all, but seriously? Is that the message we want young girls to get? Geez, at least Bella Swan cared about her family and school. So, in conclusion, I have higher standards for my Young Adult heroines and, therefore, I will not be recommending this book.