Olga Gay Worontzoff left the Underworld for her final year of high school anxious for things to return to normal, but fate has other plans.
The new hottie at school reads her thoughts but nobody else’s. Her best friend wakes up from his coma acting like a completely different person. Caught in a world that’s a mix of familiar and supernatural, she must confront what she will—or won’t—do to bring him back and stare down her own perceived inadequacies to face a couple of tenacious demons, figurative and literal.
Everything she thought she knew about reality will change as she walks the line between past and present, fear and faith, love and loyalty.
And by the end of a heartbreaking year, she might be forced to realize “normal” in the conventional sense of the word is the one thing she may never achieve.
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Thanks to the publisher for providing me with a free copy of 18 Thoughts for this blog tour and an honest review!
For this review I thought I stick to the theme and present it in 18 thoughts (more like ramblings). Make that one.
2. I'd only just finished reading 18 Things, the first book in this series before starting this one (as I read 18 Truths already last year). Therefore at the beginning it felt like I was reading a different version of the same novel.
3. As many things synchronized, I actually quite liked that.
4. In the second part I started remembering things from the second book as well, and I felt a shift from it feeling like the first book to feeling like the second book.
5. Unfortunately, this also involved more of the somewhat preachy tone that annoyed me in the second book.
6. Although I really liked the idea they got to do things over and have another shot at life I didn't like what else was thrown at them. But I won't go into spoiler here.
7. The only people that seemed important were Olga, Nate and Conner. The rest of their friends were mainly interchangeable.
8. The Angels and Demons felt like caricatures rather than characters.
9. Speaking of the afterlife; I still wonder why there's a high school in Juvie. If they're supposed to stay there forever, why the school?
10.
(show spoiler)
11. I didn't like what was happening to Conner because I felt the only reason it was happening to him was because he's *horror* an atheist, which brings me back to point five.
12. I could've done without the love triangle.
13. Why are there always different (1st person) POVs?
14. I did like the fact that Nate was able to read Olga's thoughts. I'm not sure how it was supposed to work or why it were only her thoughts he could read, but I could completely understand how self-conscious this made Olga and how she was unable to stop thinking embarrassing thoughts.
15. Why does Olga get to work in a bookshop but I don't? (I guess that's the sin of envy, oh no!)
16. After 'the thing' happens to Olga, the book lost me a bit as it all seemed a bit, I'm not completely sure how to say it since it's a fantasy novel anyway, unreal. Perhaps not original enough to really leave an impression or to wow me.
17. But I couldn't stop reading these novels. I only have the records for the books I read recently but both were finished within 24 hours each. Which is an accomplishment if you keep in mind that I spent most of the day visiting a friend. They were very hard to put away as soon as I started reading. The writing was very easy to read too.
18. Overall, this was a very enjoyable series. I've not that much experience with reading contemporary novels, but I did enjoy myself. I wasn't always to enthusiastic about the sometimes preachy undertone, but it didn't spoil all reading pleasure for me. I would definitely check out any new books written by Jamie Ayres.
(Bonus thought: Not specifically for this book, but isn't the title of this series, My So Called Afterlife, a major spoiler for 18 Things?)
18 Thoughts is the conclusion to the My So Called Afterlife-trilogy. You can also read my reviews for the other books: 18 Things and 18 Truths.
About Jamie Ayres:
Jamie Ayres writes young adult paranormal love stories by night and teaches young adults as a public school teacher by day.
When not at home on her laptop or at school, she can often be found at a local book store grabbing random children and reading to them. So far, she has not been arrested for this.
She lives in southwest Florida with her prince charming, two children (sometimes three based on how Mr. Ayres is acting), and a basset hound. She spent her youthful summers in Grand Haven, Michigan and this setting provided the inspiration for her debut novel, 18 Things.
She really does have grandmothers named Olga and Gay but unlike her heroine, she’s thankfully not named after either one of them. She loves lazy pajama days, the first page of a good book, stupid funny movies, and sharing stories with fantastic people like you. Visit her website at www.jamieayres.com
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