BOOK REVIEW: Tragedy Girl by Christine Hurley Deriso

I received this ARC from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. The scheduled publication date for this book is April 8, 2016.

Of course Anne would be drawn to Blake. He's good looking, he's friendly, and they both bring sob stories to the table: her parents died in a car wreck, his girlfriend, Cara, drowned. Of course Blake would understand what she's gone through. And of course they can help each other work through the pain. It's like it was meant to be. But just as Anne starts to feel she's finally found something good in all the tragedy, she can't ignore signs that something's off. Her friends rarely let her be alone with Blake. Even those closest to Blake seem uneasy around him. And then there are the rumors about the death of Cara, whose body was never recovered. Rumors that suggest Blake's pain is hiding something darker than Anne can even begin to comprehend.

I tried really hard to come up with something positive to say about this one. I guess the one good thing was that Anne’s new guardians (her aunt and uncle) were very caring and loving and protective and most importantly, they were THERE. Caring and loving guardians can be an anomaly in YA literature, so I can appreciate that. But that is where my appreciation ends.

Anne is grieving because both of her parents were killed in a car accident the year before. Blake is grieving because his girlfriend recently drowned and (insert creepy music here), they never find a body. Naturally, they are drawn together. Their respective tragedies are the only glue holding this thing together. For the life of me, I couldn’t see anything else that would draw these two people together. Anne is extremely whiny and wishy-washy. Blake is way too perfect for his own good and he has a very short fuse. Of course there was insta-love. After two weeks, he was declaring his love for her and saying how smart and amazing she is. Gag me please. One thing that irritated me beyond belief was the way Blake insisted on calling Anne “babe” or “baby” ALL THE TIME! Yeah, I guess that’s just a pet peeve of mine in books. I mean, she has a name, you know. USE IT!

The pacing was weird with this one. At first, it moved kind of slow but then it started moving way too fast. At first, everyone at school is in love with Blake and they all feel so sorry for him because of his loss, but then you see people (including the girl who pushed Anne onto Blake in the first place) become suspicious of him for really no reason. It didn’t make sense. Anne was so all over the place with her feelings about him. She likes him, but she doesn’t want to like him because he just lost someone, but she likes him, but she is suspicious, but she likes him. ARGHHHHH! Just make up your mind already. I understand this was supposed to be a mystery and all, but the reasons why people blamed Blake were kind of ridiculous. People were upset because he “let” her go swimming at night during the summer. Umm, okay. Was he supposed to be her keeper or something? In the meantime, I would be suspicious of Blake too because he flew off the handle SO MUCH. Anne would ask him a question and he would yell at her. Whatever did or didn’t happen to his girlfriend, that was a red flag for sure. Then there were these anonymous notes about his friend Jamie not being a good guy (he helped Blake look for his girlfriend when she didn’t come back from swimming) and there was some stupid note or rumor that the girl was still alive. Sure, yeah, because this is obviously an episode of Young and the Restless. The ending was super predictable and anti climactic. I really thought the author was going to throw some surprise twist or something, but not really. Oh, and there was a freaking epilogue. Argh, I really hate those sometimes. This one was the worst. There was no purpose to it other than to spend five pages summarizing everything that had happened after the last chapter ended. That was it. It was completely unnecessary. 

Buy/Borrow/Skip: Skip this one.