Opposite Of Always by Justin A. Reynolds
My Goodreads Rating: 3/5 stars
This is a book about a young man named Jack that falls in love with a girl named Kate, but Kate dies, and Jack is stuck in a time loop—in a very Groundhog Day fashion—until he can figure out how to save her, making many sacrifices along the way.
I appreciate a good plot. Opposite Of Always had it. There was a great story TRYING to happen under all the flaws. I enjoyed how Jack narrated, and I liked how once he gets farther into the time loops, he shortens the narration of what was happening/just happened. No one wants to sit through that. However, I cannot ignore how out of touch Reynolds was with his audience. All the teens spoke in a way that seemed like they had rehearsed their lines for hours upon hours. He made them banter and sound like they had all swallowed dictionaries and the fattest of thesauruses. This book would have been much better with more narration and a lot less dialogue, because guys, there was a lot of bad dialogue that made the book pretty painful to read.
I gave this book 3/5 stars, but that may be generous because this is the worst young adult contemporary I have ever read.
It has been over a year since I wrote this book review, and I still agree with what I said before. Though I did not enjoy the novel, I was able to finish it, and I do not finish books that I feel like I am wasting my time with, although that may just be the fact that I spent eighteen dollars on it and didn't want that money to go to waste. You could just really tell it was written by a middle-aged man. I ended up donating this book to my old school's library. I hope that someone is able to enjoy it.