BOOK REVIEW: About A Girl (Metamorphoses #3) by Sarah McCarry

This is a book review for About A Girl (Metamorphoses #3) by Sarah McCarry. I received this ARC from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. The scheduled publication date for this book is July 14, 2015.

Eighteen-year-old Tally is absolutely sure of everything: her genius, the love of her adoptive family, the loyalty of her best friend, Shane, and her future career as a Nobel prize-winning astronomer. There's no room in her tidy world for heartbreak or uncertainty--or the charismatic, troubled mother who abandoned her soon after she was born. But when a sudden discovery upends her fiercely ordered world, Tally sets out on an unexpected quest to seek out the reclusive musician who may hold the key to her past--and instead finds Maddy, an enigmatic and beautiful girl who will unlock the door to her future. The deeper she falls in love with Maddy, the more Tally begins to realize that the universe is bigger--and more complicated--than she ever imagined. Can Tally face the truth about her family--and find her way home in time to save herself from its consequences?

I really wanted to love this book. There is so much diversity here. Tally is raised by her aunt, along with her aunt's gay best friend and his partner. Tally is also best friends with a transgendered teen, with whom she has a crush. The first 15% of the book was promising. Tally has a crush on her best friend Shane and their relationship takes a bit of a romantic turn one night. Tally and Shane ignore what happened and even ignore each other. Feeling more than a bit hurt, Tally decides to go on a "quest" to find her supposed father (Jack Black), someone she knows absolutely nothing about.

This is where the author lost me. First of all, Tally had no way of knowing whether this was her father or not, but she decides to go find him based on an old picture. Actually, there was a reveal about Jack towards the end that I totally saw coming. Since Tally is all about the logical and rational, it is surprising that she didn't. So she flies out to the Pacific Northwest to meet this man and ask whether he is her father. She meets Maddy, the third person to a kind of love triangle. I know I was supposed to think Maddy was this wild, beautiful girl but I just thought she was boring. Jack and Tally have one meeting where she asks him questions and he evades, he offers to let her stay with him  . . .  and then nothing happens. There was an hour of reading this book where the author did nothing but describe things Tally and Maddy ate and their love scenes. Tally went days not even speaking to Jack, the man she came to see. So what was even the point? And she barely called her family, even though she had left with just a note. The ending was just weird. The category for this book is Young Adult Contemporary. Umm, no. The ending was definitely fantasy and it made no sense. This is the third one in the series, but people have said you can read it as a stand-alone. I am not sure if that's true because it feels like the ending would have made more sense if I had read the series. The first book in the series actually tells the story of Tally's aunt and mother. I still have no interest in reading anything about her family. 

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