I've had some solid reads out of this forum's recommendations (like The Black Company for instance) but I got burnt hard by you guys with Lost Stars. I read it last year and I'm still salty. I really wanted to like this book, so confident in purchasing it I even got the hardcover. What a let down this book was. It's my own damn fault, because I bought into the whole "It's classed as Young Adult but it's really not and anyone can enjoy it". No, it is the epitome of YA and fits squarely alongside Hunger Games, Divergent teenage bullshit. Don't let anyone tell you different. High School me wouldn't of minded, but present day me was frustrated as fuck.
I'm nearly 30 and after watching the OT on VHS as a little tacker I greedily gulped down the prequel kool-aide when it came along because hey, it's STAR WARS! It took a couple of years to learn just because it's got Star Wars on it, doesn't mean it's good. With this book it started off with little shit that made me wanna force choke a bitch at every dumb decision and by the end I was hoping the main characters formed a suicide pact taking everyone else with them. I wasted a birthday gift by requesting The Phantom Menace for PlayStation ages ago and that game was a better experience than this book.
The idea of using ancillary character's perspective on the big events is cool and I'd like to see a well versed, mature take on it - but this isn't it. Funnily enough I read 'Nation' by Terry Pratchett recently, a stand-alone unrelated to Discworld and only after the fact did I discover it was classed as a YA book. While reading it never crossed my mind. That's how you pull off a good YA novel. It's not all bad news though, I donated my copy of Lost Stars to a High School library nearby. Ultimately I'm not the target audience and I hope they enjoy it more than I did.
