A Friday Five (#15) My Life After Now by Jessica Verdi

On Fridays I'll feature one of my favorite books or a book I read recently and come up 5 words to describe it.  View it as a super mini review.  This week I'm featuring:

My Life After Now by Jessica Verdi

It took me forever to read this even though it was sitting on my shelf forever.  Here are my five words to describe it:

1. Important
2. Predictable
3. Dramatic
4. Efficacious
5. Laborious

Important:  Without a doubt this topic is very important, and the message it tries to get across is even more important.  This topic isn't discussed enough in YA, and I think more needs to be written and discussed about it. 

Predictable: As important of a subject matter that is being dealt with here, I also found it to be pretty predictable.  My dirty little secret is I read ahead or flip to the end in about 99% of the books I read.  I didn't need to and didn't with this book.  Within the first 3 chapters I could have plotted out what was going to happen in the rest of the book.   I don't know if it's a bad thing, but it was extremely predictable.

Dramatic:  This sums up the story as well as the main character.  She was very dramatic and a little annoying in her drama, but it makes a lot of sense.  She was very much a stereotypical actress. 

Efficacious: Despite being predictable and dramatic, this book definitely was efficacious in getting its point across.  I took the lessons away that that the author's wanted me to, and I think others will as well.

Laborious:  I hate to another negative adjective, but there was a lot going on in this book and it didn't always go smoothly.  I don't know if this goes back to how predictable the book was, or something else, but it just didn't go smoothly.  Everything tried to be wrapped up by the end, and usually I appreciate that, but for this book that might have not been the best decision. 

This comes off as a pretty mixed review, and that is pretty accurate of my feelings about the book.  That being said, I almost feel that this should be required reading because of the subject matter alone.  I think a few plot lines could have been dropped and it would have been a better book, or something more unexpected could have happened.  Either way, I hope there are many more books written about this, because it's so important.