Ask Me How I Got Here

by Christine Heppermann

[shannonmiz]

You can find the full review and all the fancy and/or randomness that accompanies it at It Starts at Midnight
I feel bad saying I hated this book but... I hated this book. Now, I was able to find a few things I did like, so that's good?

Thing 1: It did deal with tough issues, and that is always important.

Thing 2: It took me about 45 minutes to read, and who doesn't love that?

Thing 3: Some of the poems were pretty clever.

So what made this not work for me?

First, while it deals with tough topics, it deals with wayyy too many of them. It's almost like someone was playing Tough Topics Bingo™ and really wanted to win cover-all. Which is great, except this book is incredibly short and in verse (which makes it even shorter) and you simply cannot cover that many topics in any amount of depth. So I felt like I was watching an After School Special on fast-forward. I didn't have time to care about most of what was happening before we were moving on to a new thing. And some of it didn't even make sense or feel authentic to the start of the story, especially the end.

I also could not have cared less about the main character. Actually, maybe that isn't true. I can't quite decide if I didn't like her, or was apathetic toward her, but regardless, I couldn't connect to her in any way.

Bottom Line: I know a lot of people did like this, so maybe it is a "me" thing? So if it sounds like your kind of thing, it could still be worth a shot- plus, it's short if you don't like it ;)

**Copy provided by publisher for review