My rating: 3 of 5 stars
While sorting through my Kindle YA books last week, I stumbled on this one. And because the title is one of my fave 80s songs (by Simple Minds, from The Breakfast Club soundtrack), I decided to give it a go. 😊
Gardnerville is a town like no other. There's no aging or disease, it's a bit like paradise. Except, everything in life has a price and in this place it happens to be a totally screwed-up madness that grips teenagers and causes a lot of trouble...
Okay. Um. Yep.
This book is trippy as hell. It's like a nightmarish ride on a train that goes around and around the same station but you can't get off because it never stops and your head keeps questioning everything.
Yep, that's some crazy shit I just read.
The story is told through the eyes of Skylar Gardner who is a really hard narrator to follow, and even harder to like. She's unreliable, addicted to pills that make her forget, and is totally obsessed with her missing older sister. She's also frustrating as hell because she's all over the place and puts herself in shitty situations constantly, then forgets. Only to make the same mistakes all over again. 😕
And don't even get me started on this weird town. It's such a bizarre place, a destination that's supposed to be a sanctuary of sorts, but seems more like a hellish version of purgatory. Everyone who lives there is totally weird, and not in a good way.
The story unfolds very slowly--many times, a bit too slowly--and most of what's happening is a series of the muddled confusion inside Sky's head. It's through the flashback chapters (with titles from other 80s songs) that we start to get a feel for what's really going on and get a better understanding of why things are so strange.
Because I repeat: this story is very strange. And unfortunately, the longer it went, the more the intriguing nature slipped away. About halfway through, the book started dragging and I started losing interest. But I kept reading because I wanted to know all the secrets. And while the answers fit the trippy narrative, it just wasn't enough to wow me.
In the end, I enjoyed this but I didn't love it. I think it took too long to get to the core of the story.
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