Reviewed by shannonmiz on
The Good:
-The concept is pretty great, really. A bunch of snobby rich kids having to compete for their inheritance? Yes, please.
-It was entertaining, most of the time. The challenges were fun to read about, and it would be a really fun thing to actually be able to do.
It was pretty fast paced after some initial slowness getting into the story. The bulk of the story (the competition, mostly) was easy to read and moved quite quickly.
The Not-So-Good:
-The characters were flat. Avery and Riley were both kind of…. there. Basically, I kept forgetting who was who. And that isn’t ideal when one is a 17 year old wealthy, black-sheep female and the other is a 19 year old dude who works in his dad’s law firm. Seriously, I should not have ever mixed those two particular characters up, but I did. A lot. Especially since their names were gender neutral, I literally had no idea sometimes. Avery was whinier than Riley, so when someone was complaining of the two, I knew who she was.
-It was so farfetched. Okay, I understand that I had to suspend some belief that an old lady was sending spoiled descendants all over the place to play some silly game, and I could do that. But some of it was too much. First, Avery attended this boarding school, and it was some kind of hellish prison that would have been shut down eons ago. (This was where I stopped reading the first time.) Then, everyone is just pleased as punch, and not at all concerned, that this 17 year old is being escorted from hotel room to hotel room with some young man who she basically just met. My grandma is pretty liberal, and even she would probably put the kibosh on that little situation, never mind what stuffy old lady VanDemere would do. Then, Grandmother has all these character traits that everyone should be displaying, but it’s cool when people just start being disgusting excuses for humans (and yes, she knows what is going on).
-Expanding on the last point, these people are awful. Avery’s whining is nothing compared to the nonsense that spews from every other person in this family. They are spoiled, and underhanded, and duplicitous, and all around awful. There is some slight redemption for some, but… mostly not.
-Even the moments that should have been chock full of feels fell flat. Maybe it was because I didn’t care about Avery, but I really think the scenes were just overall not quite there in terms of emotional fortitude. I don’t want to expand on it, because it would spoil a big plot point, but I should have cared a lot, and I only cared mildly. In general, I found the writing to be a bit too simplistic to evoke much feeling
-The twist at the end didn’t make a bit of sense. There was this “twist” at the end, and while it surprised me, the only reason it surprised me was because it came so far out of left field that no one would have seen it coming. It didn’t have a thing to do with the story, and was so wildly off topic and unbelievable that I just was left confused and wondering what the point was.
-Avery was too “damsel-y” for my taste. Especially in the beginning of the book, she would make some ridiculous decision, or just be acting weak and whiny in general, and she'd basically just lament about her misfortunes until Riley swooped in and saved the day. Girl, pick your own self up. Also, she’d get in some sort of ridiculous tiff with Riley, narrate that she didn’t trust him, and literally two sentences later be swooning over him. Uh, what now?
Bottom Line: It had potential, but it just didn’t work for me on any level. For sheer entertainment value, I will give it 1.5 stars, but I can’t in good conscious give more than that. The negatives clearly outweighed the positives, though the concept was fun.
I received a copy from the publisher via Netgalley for review.
Reading updates
- Started reading
- 7 January, 2015: Finished reading
- 7 January, 2015: Reviewed