Grit by Gillian French | Book Review

Title: Grit

Author: Gillian French

Series: N/A

Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary, Mystery, Realistic Fiction

Publisher: Harper Teen

Publication date: May 16th, 2017

Pages: 304

My rating: 

---

It’s summer in rural Maine; when seventeen-year-old Darcy Prentiss isn’t raking berries with her sister, Mags, and cousin, Nell, during the day, she’s drinking and swimming with the boys in the quarry by night. She knows how to have a good time, just like anyone else, but when you’ve been designated the town slut, every move you make seems to further solidify your “trashy girl” reputation.

But the fun is what’s been keeping Darcy’s mind off the things she can’t forget: a disturbing secret she shares with Nell, the mysterious disappearance of her ex-best friend, and that hazy Fourth of July party that ended with Darcy drunk, on her back, wondering how she let it get this far.

Then someone in town anonymously nominates Darcy to be in the running for Bay Festival Princess—a cruel, almost laughable gesture that can only be the work of someone with a score to settle. Everything Darcy has been trying to keep down comes bubbling to the surface in ways she wasn’t prepared to handle…and isn’t sure if she can.

“We may not have been friends anymore, but Rhiannon was my age, sixteen last summer, and one way or another, she never came home again.”

I’m incredibly disappointed right now. I said it. I’ve been hyping up this book in my head for I don’t know how long, probably ever since it came out. I pictured something completely different from what I ended up reading about, and though that works sometimes, I cannot say the same for this one.

Basically, this could have been better if it was done completely different, because hell, it talked about a lot of important things, but that wasn’t the case, so… yeah, I’m a sad and popped balloon.

“After five retakes, I can live with the last one. I look kind of tired, but not too bad, considering how the day started. I’m not smiling, but like Nell’s crazy curl, it looks right.”

I don’t know if realistic fiction is not my kind of genre or what, but I feel nothing was really happened throughout the entire book. We were following this main character that I really liked, but nothing interesting occurred, and frankly, I got bored sometimes. It was purely focused on her every day life and her interactions with her family and the world, and just that. And at times I liked what I was reading, but I didn’t really see a point for the whole story, neither a plot. The story was simply there.

Something I liked was how supportive Darcy was with her sister and cousin, and how much she loved both of them. You could see that during the entire book, and it was the same way with the other two, which I was very happy to see.

There was some romance in the book as well, but it wasn’t the entire focus of the story, in my opinion. Yes, there was a love interest and a few scenes where you get to know a bit more the relationship he had with our main character, but honestly? I don’t even know what the main focus of the story was.

“He won’t meet my gaze, and I think of all the times he tickled my side in the school hallway, or lugged me over his shoulder through the parking lot while I shrieked and laughed.”

Something that really (DON’T MAKE ME SAY HOW MUCH) disappointed me was the fact that nothing was addressed. There were a lot of very important things that the author could have talked about, like feminism, consent, sexism… and none of them weren’t. Ugh, I was so pissed about that, because though those were some of the most important focuses of the story, they were just hanging there, and you read them and knew they were wrong, but they were simply ignored. Like, excuse me, WHAT.

Also I didn’t think the mystery was really well done. It didn’t feel like a mystery novel. I mean, it wasn’t one of those stories where I needed to get reading because I wanted to know what really happened. Like I said before, there wasn’t really a plot, just a lot of things thrown there.

Maybe it was me and this isn’t the type of story I like, but I didn’t really liked it. I thought it had an amazing premise, and it had a lot of potential, but it ended up letting me down.

Follow me on BlogLovin’

Goodreads | Instagram | Twitter | Contact Me