inlibrisveritas
Written on May 19, 2014
Another New Life follows the story of Miranda, a college freshman who is looking forward to starting anew and moving away from her painful past. Here is where I had my first issue, what about her past is painful? It takes the story a while to get to this, and when you finally find out what happened and begin to understand what’s going on all of the sudden there is even more. I think I would have preferred that these revelations had happened a bit sooner in the book, maybe not to the other characters but at least so I felt somewhat in the loop. Because we found out the ‘big’ reason for everything later in the book it made me feel like some of the “results” were just plot devices meant to add depth to a shallow pool, when in fact they had relevance the entire time. I’m sort of at odds with how I feel because the revelations deal with some hard-hitting issues, but having them so out of place in the story made it lose some of it’s importance.
Miranda was an decent main character, who clearly has some issues that she’s ready to leave behind but she’s not adjusting well. In fact she has adjustment issues for the first few chapters, to the point where she will attempt to escape a classroom, but then becomes well adjusted in another chapter or so. It didn’t feel like a realistic time frame, or maybe it was her 180 attitude that made it weird. Troy I liked for the most part, up until the end at least. They sort of put each on a pedestal which is sort of irritating because it’s clear neither of them are perfect. I liked that they were childhood friends which add a bit of sweetness to the story and I liked how they both have to cope with how much they have changed, but it didn’t feel like enough to me. They were really young best friends, like elementary school young, and having them rely so much on that felt odd to me. Though it’s entirely possible I’m just a cynic and I’m not really the intended party (which I don’t think I am because plenty of people have enjoyed it). I also got a bit tired of all the kissing and sex, and that’s saying something.
Without spoiling anything I will talk about a few things that bothered me to the point of not enjoying this one. Once the big revelation is out Troy doesn’t handle it well…in fact he handles it so poorly that I wanted to punch him. Now that I think about it he doesn’t handle the first “revelation” very well either. He takes her problematic past and makes it his, instead of reassuring her or offering to be there for her he shut down completely. I get that people do this in real life, I do…but that doesn’t mean I like it. He also makes some comments that I would have a hard time accepting or letting slide. There were also comments made by her new best friend that I just want want to stuff back into her mouth, because it is not her place (best friend or not) to tell you anything about your sex-life uninvited.
So overall this just wasn’t a book for me. If you enjoy New Adult contemporaries that deal with a new college student dealing with their past and trying to move forward then I urge you to give it a shot. It’s another one of those personality clash type situations.