Girl Against the Universe

DNFThis was a good story but it's just not anything new. I mean the PTSD representation is great and original but I hate the cliche cocky Boy meets Girl and Girl is the ,only one that understands him. The book was just kinda cliche for me and not that unique or different.

This novel of a teenage girl afflicted by PTSD in reaction to numerous unlikely tragedies in the course of her short life is a rather charming tale of first love and self-healing that felt just a little unbalanced (and I don't mean mentally).

The relationship between the narrator and Her Love Interest is really well done but her interactions with her new best friend seem forced; in fact, the character of Jade is sadly underdeveloped and I was aggrieved she ended up getting so little attention (her first appearance seemed so promising!). The psychiatrist, too, got less play than I thought he should, as he kind of disappeared once the story got rolling. On the other hand, I was expecting the step-father to be a total background prop and was most gratified to be wrong. And every so often, the readability of the story is put into a sharp contrast by a discordantly chunky paragraph of pointless detail, usually a trivial detail that should have been glossed over.

As a side note, I really felt like this book's title should have been a tennis pun (Courting Disaster maybe?); Girl Against the Universe sounds like a humorous, sci-fi epic about a chick with superpowers.