Tamara by Jeffrey Reddick and Jon Doyle

2/5 stars

You know, it seems like people have a really hard time writing a female killer. I’ll accept killing for love, I’ll even accept revenge killing, but I won’t accept an “Ivy-league smart” girl turning into someone obsessed with being beautiful and killing because she can. Tamara’s personality did a complete 180, and it made no sense. For as smart as she was supposed to be, she acted like a complete idiot.

I think the worst bit was all the joking about suicide, eating disorders, date rape, and LGBTQ. I absolutely understand having characters who are prejudiced and the like, but making jokes out of sensitive topics like that didn’t gel with me. There are ways to go about including these topics without coming across as insensitive.

I hate the way the women were written in this book. The only one who had any backbone was Chloe, and even then, she was your stereotypical “edgy” girl from the early 2000s. None of the female characters had any depth whatsoever. And what was Kisha doing with the book? Who was she intending on using the spells on? That part was a little too vague, I thought.

This just didn’t do it for me. I almost DNF’d several times, but I continued on, thinking that it would pick up before the end. Unfortunately, I just couldn’t get into it at all.

Thank you, BookSirens and Encyclopocalypse, for the ARC. Everything in this review is my own.