#teen lit

Star Rating: ** (2/5 Stars)

I didn’t expect this book to be very good, given the blurb on the back, so at least I wasn’t disappointed.  It took me about two hours to read, and I was bored for most of it.  The story is told in the first person present by Lane, a seventeen year old high schooler obsessed with serial killers.  When a killer called The Decapitator comes to town and starts contacting her directly, Lane has to keep it a secret for fear of her family getting hurt.  

I liked Lane.  She’s reserved and quiet, and feels isolated from her peers because she doesn’t enjoy the things they like.  She observes everything from an unemotional point of view.  She doesn’t see the point in getting riled up over things like breakups and crushes.  At the same time, Green does a good job of showing how Lane is emotional.  She clearly isn’t a sociopath.  She has one close friend, she cares deeply for her family and the animals she takes care of at the local vet’s office, and she dotes on her little brother.  She herself feels abnormal, but the reader sees her as merely introverted, not cold.  She also has a strong sense of justice, even if it’s not always justice as the courts define it.

The book’s major failing is the writing.  It’s clearly a debut novel, and the writing is simply not very good.  First person singular throws me off immediately, and if you follow that up with mediocre supporting characters, a plotline full of potholes, and unrealistic reactions from basically every character to every situation you’ve completely lost me.  Killer Instinct is essentially a murder mystery, but I had narrowed the list of suspects down to two people by the halfway point because all of the red herrings were so obvious.  

In summary: It wasn’t awful, but I wouldn’t recommend it.  Not good enough to be worth it.