Saturday, December 21, 2013

The Best Night of Your (Pathetic) Life by Tara Altebrando

Published July 5, 2012 by Dutton Juvenile
Paperback, 239 pages
Borrowed from library




After Mary lost her spot at Georgetown University to jerk Jake Barbone, she's been finding a way to get him back. And with a week until she graduates, the perfect way to get revenge arrives in the form of the Oyster High Scavenger Hunt. Racing all night against the clock, Mary and her team hustle to make sure they come out on top. But of course, nothing goes without a hitch or two...



I hate that I didn't like this book. Because it just sounded like something I would enjoy so much and after feeling really bleh about the books I've been reading, I was really hoping things could start looking up. But obviously, it's just not in the stars for me. I tried so hard to like this book but I could NOT look past the complete...grossness of everyone and everything.

WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS

By now, if you've read my previous reviews, you'd know that I tend to go full-rant mode when a book gets anything below three stars. I probably shouldn't even bother labelling these reviews with a warning, it should just be assumed. But anyway, I want to start my rant by stating again that I really wanted to like this book. The premise sounded so interesting, including all this fun stuff about scavenger hunts which really was fun. If there's one thing I liked about this book, it was reading about the scavenger hunt which was larger than life.

If there's one thing I didn't like though, it was Mary. She was THE WORST and let me tell you why: Mary was juvenile, self-centered, whiney, rude, mean, ignorant and just a terrible person in general. God bless her friends for putting up with her because I know I wouldn't be able to do it. All she did the entire race was take advantage of her friends, be rude to them, boss them around and complain. 

The thing I disliked the most about Mary though was how she reacted to the news of Winter, her best friend being with Carson, her crush. It makes sense to be disappointed but not at all to victimize Winter for stealing 'her man'. Not saying that what Winter did was very nice but for goodness sake, leave the damn guy alone! Mary needs to grow some guts and learn to be more mature. Carson is not freaking obliged to like you. And I am certainly not surprised that he doesn't because man Mary, you make it hard to even want to read about you. 

And the worst part was that I couldn't even bring myself to agree with Mary on Barbone. He really didn't seem bad at all and I don't think Mary had a good reason to dislike him enough to want to make him feel humiliated and ashamed. As it appears, all Barbone really did to her was taking her spot at Georgetown which is obviously pretty sucky but wasn't even his fault. I don't know, maybe this is just me making up reasons to dislike Mary (which I am wont to do when a character really rubs me the wrong way) but don't hate on Barbone! 

It's probably a red flag when it turns out that the antagonist is my favourite character.



Okay, so it turns out that I have an abnormally large amount of stuff to say about this book and I am nowhere near finished with my thoughts so I'll just quickly dash them in here.

To me, Patrick came off a bit icky and so I don't blame Mary for not liking him. I think I would give the same message to him as I did to Mary: grow up. So the girl you like doesn't like you. Deal with it. And oh my gosh, do NOT kiss her in an attempt to make her 'feel things'. That's just a bad idea. 

Another example of a bad idea is stealing your principal's car just to win the hunt. That is so unbelievably illegal and it's kind of hard to believe that NO ONE is hyperventilating about the consequences. 

Anywayyy, I can't say I really enjoyed this book. I mean, I liked the scavenger hunt but the characters were all super aggravating and we all know what happens when I don't like the characters... 



Don't know that I would recommend this to anyone. I really didn't like this book but from Goodreads, it appears that I am, for the most part, alone in my opinion. Maybe you'll like this?

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