Andi's ABCs

You know what bums me out...when a book has the potential to be so great and it just isn't there. It really makes me sad because if just a couple of tweaks were to have happened the book could have been out of the park instead on mediocre. Between was one of those books for me. It had so much promise in the beginning and it just didn't live up to what it could have been.

The story is about Liz, one of the most popular girls in school, and the night she will ever be able to forget, her 18 the birthday. Too bad she can't remember a thing because she is now dead and everything is blank. She knows she was on her father's boat with her five closest friends. They had drinks and smoked a little pot, but that is all she knows. How she went from that to death is a complete mystery. With the help of Alex, another boy that was killed from her school, they uncover the mystery of both their deaths and what friendship, family and forgiveness is really about.

The thing with this story is that it had all the pieces. Everything was there to make this so good but it just wasn't. Liz was kind of all over the place. She was snotty and selfish and not all that likable. She grew on me some, but not enough to really feel the changes in her until towards the end. The other characters were just okay too. There was nothing that drew me to them. I just didn't feel any kind of connection. And based on their characters the end was blatantly obvious. I saw everything that happened coming a mile away. But none of that was really what bothered me about the book. What really got to me was the length. This book was so long and it just didn't need to be. It was just way too repetitive which made it wordy and drawn out. Liz's boots hurt even in death. I got the point the first couple of times so I didn't need to be beat over the head with it. That fact alone is what really made what could have been a beautiful story into a just okay one.