I received this book for free from ARC in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
Vivian Divine Is Dead by Lauren Sable Published by Katherine Tegen Books on June 3rd, 2014
Genres: Mystery, Suspense, YA
Goodreads
I want to start this review by saying I did not finish Vivian Divine is Dead. To be perfectly honest I made it 42 pages in got annoyed, guessed the ending, flipped to the last chapter and found out my guess was right.
“So why even write a review Octavia? Why bother yourself or us with one?”
To simply answer your question, because I want to and I think it will make a good discussion topic. So there. But seriously, I often run into books where it does nothing for me. Books that I barely make a dent in that for one reason or another cause me to quit and never look back. I don’t always write reviews for books I stamp DNF but when I do I think it’s important to say exactly what didn’t work for me and why I just couldn’t bring myself to continue.
Vivian Divine Is Dead had 3 major flaws for me.
1.) The MC (Vivian) annoyed the hell out of me.
Characters have a tendency to annoy me at one point or another but Vivian really just rubbed me the wrong way. I get that she was a child actress, who lost her mom and was suffering from neglect because her dad “checked out” but she just…she just wasn’t a tangible kind of troubled. She was flat out annoying. Yes I know she could have grown within the remaining however many pages but her many decisions in those first few chapters sealed her fate in my eyes.
2.) The mystery was not a mystery.
This the #1 reason why I don’t read mystery books. Or watch mystery movies. 98% of the time I know who did it before I even hit the 20% mark. In some cases it’s fun, even hilarious, but most of the time it’s annoying. It’s not like I expected this HUGE mystery from VDID anyway but it was so blatant I thought maybe they were going to do a change up on me. Maybe they were leading me into direct C when I should have been going in direct 26. This was not the case.
3.) It felt like I was reading a book.
I know this sounds silly but let me explain. Am I really the only person that finds themselves so caught up in the world, the characters, the PLOT! That you completely forget you’re sitting in your bed? The best thing about books is that they take you places. Sometimes they take you to great and mystical place other times they take you to plain old Ohio but at the end of the day they take you out of your day to day life and submerge you in this alternate reality. Even though VDID was set in the hustle and bustle of Hollywood (and then Mexico) I never felt like I left the couch and that in itself is just horrible.
So yes I DNFed VDID and no I didn’t give it a large window of opportunity, but it wouldn’t be fair for me not to at least voice why it didn’t work for me if you think it could possibly work for you.
