The Graces

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.