“Just Kids. Kids, pretending to be okay in a world that wasn’t.”

Chapter Thirty-five.

Six teenagers in small town Ohio are all linked together because of a town tragedy and how it impacted each of their families. This group of kids call themselves ‘The Ordinary”. They have a rule that they won’t talk about the event that brought them all together and only do things that make them happy so they can forget all about the grief that took over the town of Splendor. The Ordinary have a Youtube channel where they post fake paranormal videos and what not but one night when they are going out to film one of their episodes, the unexpected happens. They catch video of something falling from the sky and it changes everything that they have ever known.

I was not a huge fan of these characters, even though I wanted to be. I was getting all the boys confused from the get go. They are all supposed to have quirky personality traits but I feel like you could have morphed them all into one and it would have been fine. I didn’t really like Franny, I just found her kind of annoying. There was not one exact thing that I can think of off the top of my head, I just didn’t think she was likeable. Characters get a two out of five.

“Nothing in this universe could ever be deleted, only hidden.”

Chapter Thirty-six.

The atmosphere was alright. Splendor is just like any other small and ordinary town in the United States. I feel like this had to happen in a small town though, it would not be as fun in a big city. Three out of five.

I expected more from this author to be honest with you. I have heard so many people rave about ‘Beach Read’, so I thought the writing must be great. It was an average writing style, it got the job done, nothing impressive. Some paragraphs were very nice and emotional but some paragraphs are not going to make up for a 350 page novel. Once again, a three out of five.

“How many billions of things had to happen just right to give me this ordinary life.”

Chapter Thirty-six.

This is a very interesting plot and one that is right up my alley. It is a coming of age story, check mark. Aliens, another check. Compared to Stranger Things, basically a bingo. Again, this book is just ordinary like the group of friends. I am not that all impressed by it and I feel like the plot we had going for 90% of the books just got all thrown away with the ending. I don’t think that this book was leading towards that at all. There’s so many things I could say but it would be spoilers. We will just leave a three star here.

The intrigue fell flat as well. The first half of the book was so slow. I did not know when the story would actually start happening. Then we got to that fifty percent mark and it all started happening and the pacing was great. I was making theories/predictions throughout my time reading.. I got all of them right. Yes, that is fun getting to know that I was right but also makes it boring when I knew what would would happen. 3 out of five.

My logic complaint, I do not know if this falls in the right category but we will just put it here. It’s the ending thing again, I guess it works with the grief aspect of the story but I feel like it just made the rest of the story seem pointless. I think there were some loose ends with some of the plots as well. They just were not wrapped up. 2 or 3? Let’s do a 2.5

This was an average read for me, I mean, I kind of feel like I wasted my time but it is too late to complain about that now. I feel like this book would have been good with just Franny and Remy but instead we got a whole pack of underdeveloped characters. The atmosphere was just a small town, nothing marvelous about it. The writing was like any ole book. The plot was really cool I just wish we would have got a better ending. This was an average read, nothing more to it.

The final rating for this book is a 2.75 out of 5 stars.

There will be reading vlog for my time reading this book. It will come out 01/19/2021 at 9PM EST. You subscribe to my YouTube here: Izzy Rain – YouTube or you can follow me on Facebook at Izzy Rain | Facebook