The Graces

I must be honest I was a little skeptical about this book, let's be honest the reviews are not exactly glowing and I very nearly switched to reading Libba Bray's The Diviners instead but something made me persevere. I'm not now quite sure what that something was after I've completed the book, maybe it was a promise of a great ending I wouldn't see coming.

This book has some elements that I can see readers would find a little trashy and tropey. We have the rich and exclusive Grace siblings, they are wealthy and beautiful and the centre of the school's gossip mill especially since people think they are witches. Enter River, the new kid in town, who is trying to throw herself into the eye line of the three Grace siblings so she can get to know more about whether all the rumours of their witchcraft is true.

One of the things I struggled most with in this book is that I didn't particularly like the main character, River. She was quite whiney and just didn't have any particular characteristics to recommend her. She just kept kind of hanging around the Grace's, creeping in and out of their house and trying to play it cool. I found her difficult to read from the perspective of and the whole hint dropping about her huge ‘secret' she was hiding just didn't add much to the story.

Taking this alongside the fact that the Grace siblings were not that likable either. As the book progressed they became less and less so and your sympathy for them wained a lot. Their blind dedication to each other regardless of the rights or wrongs of a situation made the narrative quite narrow and it meant I lacked emotional connection with many of their points of view.

I made it through this book and sometimes I'd find myself quite enjoying the characters and the journey I thought we might be going on but then the story almost began to shut itself down. I think there were storylines we didn't follow that could have been further explored and some characters were under utilised. It became a story too narrowly focused on the Grace siblings and River whereas some further context from other parties may have helped us engage more with the story on a different level.

I know The Curses is due for release at some point in the future and I may have a little bit of curiosity to see what happens next but I'm not sure I could read it unless there is some widening of the story arc to bring more depth to the story.

The Graces was an unusual book. It's probably the best way I have to describe it, as I'm not sure I have a clue what I just read.

The book follows a teenage girl as she moves to a new school and becomes obsessed with a family called Grace, who she suspects to be witches. She is determined to become part of their inner circle, desperate for the brother to fall in love with her. In fact, I didn't feel like the main character and narrator of this book had any strong personality or direction. There didn't feel like there was any insight into her past (except brief mentions of her parents behavior which was never explained or examined). The character even remained nameless for the first portion of the book!

The Graces were interesting, but majority of them were not really given much depth. I think this book would have been a strong candidate if the characters had been fleshed out and given more aspects to make them feel 3D.

1/5 stars

Possible spoilers:
I really tried to like this book but couldn't bring myself to.

Summary:
Our main character, River, is obsessed with the Grace family, which has a complicated history. She is in love with Fenrin Grace, who's supposed to be the most attractive guy at school. He also has two sisters, Summer and Thalia Grace. Summer is gone, whereas Thalia is both beautiful and untouchable. River wants to be a part of their group but knows that they tend to switch friends rather quickly.

My problems with these books are:

1) This book is the Walmart version of Twilight. Twilight was more enjoyable because I could actually find enjoyable moments within all that mess.

2) We have an all-white cast with one token, possibly a South Asian character. I wasn't really sure what her ethnicity was. All the characters are either problematic or show no growth throughout the book. Thalia has no other interesting character traits other than how she dresses. Summer is transparent. She doesn't hide anything and just tells River everything. Fenrin is only shown as unattainable and hot. It is stated that he is possibly bisexual, but this is used to show how the other characters are biphobic/queerphobic. Trigger Warning: From River to Fenrin's own mother, they both use the word “disgusting” to describe Fenrin. River because Fenrin's kissing another boy. His mother likely called him that for the same reasons. This was a breaking point and they almost immediately dropped it. 

3) River is practically obsessed with the Graces. This is shown through their thoughts and is a recurring problem as they can be creepy and borderline stalker-like. We learn that River isn't her real name. She does everything she can in order to become a different person. She does so in order to please others. Specifically, people she doesn't even know well. She is constantly putting other girls down. From judging their mannerisms to how much lip gloss they have on. Again, I know sometimes you can read a book and not like the main character, but she has no redeeming qualities, and this affects all the other characters, who barely have a personality.

4) SO MANY TROPES THAT I DESPISE. I can usually excuse tropes I dislike. I'm not like other girls' tropes, using diverse characters to give other characters “development”, “mean girl” status, etc. All these tropes combined can only make a mess of a book. Perhaps they would work with a better set of characters, but the current set is not worth reading. In addition, the writing isn't that good either. It's a rather slow story, and there are parts where you feel as if the problem was just added to create drama or some form of plot which there was none of.

5) I skimmed the book all the way to the end. Without any spoilers, given the ending was a set up for you to go read the other book. It leaves you with a cliffhanger.

To summarize, the characters suck, there is no plot, there are so many bad tropes used, and this book has no redeemable qualities. Go read Twilight or any other book that's better than this one.