Tuesday, March 13, 2007

The Nature of Jade by Deb Caletti

It took me a while to decide how I felt about this book, but I finally decided that I mostly felt annoyed by it. The main character is an 18-year-old girl (Jade) who suffers from anxiety attacks and is trying to figure out what her place in the world is. The book is told from Jade's perspective, and keeps switching confusingly between present-tense and past-tense narration.  A lot of Jade's observations about people and their behavior were very interesting, but then she'd say something that just made me feel like she was being overly "precious."
 
This was one of those books that took me a couple of weeks to read, because it just wasn't doing it for me, but I was reluctant to give up. I finally decided that I just didn't care too much about Jade or her family and so I skimmed the last 100 pages.
 
Teens may well enjoy this book, and other adults may too. I don't think Caletti is a bad writer (though the constant switching between tenses was confusing to me), but I just didn't connect with her characters in this book.

No comments: