book reviews forevermore

Chick-lit meets urban fantasy. Not much world building, since it drops into modern day Chicago, with the caveat that vampires recently "came out." There's a lot of talk about boys, sex, and clothes. In fact, we usually know what everyone is wearing. For an academic who doesn't care much, there is lot of attention to clothes. The breezy, conversational, colloquial writing style works for chick lit, but I eventually found it a turn-off. It was as if it couldn't take itself seriously, but was asking us to. Additionally, I prefer strong heroines, but by the end of the book, I felt like we were being told how strong Merit is rather than shown. The trouble is, I'm old enough to know that you can talk about being "strong" and doing physical training all you like, but if your focus is on how you are perceived rather than a personal code, any core 'strength' is a brittle one.