Frankie messes up a few times and her parents enroll her in a military academy. Frankie is a successful fashion blogger and has secretly applied to the American Fashion Academy, so she is understandably upset, but seems to get over it very quickly. She's a teenager! She should be throwing a fit.
I thought it was over-the-top that her parents took such drastic measures over a few teenage transgressions. But this is a cute, contemporary so I can get over that.
But Frankie, I just couldn't understand. She doesn't want to go, but when she gets there, she decides to do her best. Over and over again. Then she screws up. All she has to do is get three demerits or a low GPA and she will be thrown out. So why is it such a big deal for her to get thrown out? She just doesn't seem upset or mad about being there, and she should be! And she vacillates so much between giving it her all and then deciding to screw up again. I couldn't ride that roller coaster. It just wasn't believable to me.
I also had a really hard time with this Academy. A new student starts and you don't do anything to help them acclimate? You don't give them a tour, you give them impossible physical challenges without any training, you hand them a bow and arrow and tell them to shoot it, and on and on. This "over-the-topness" was just too much. Frankie got thrown to the wolves, and she just kept taking it.
She was making some friends and they were helping her, but I didn't care about them either. I just didn't like this story. I didn't feel any tension or drama. It seemed Frankie had several easy outs and didn't take them, which made her trials meaningless. So I took the easy out and quit reading at 47%.
Published by Balzer + Bray, May 22, 2018
eARC obtained from Edelweiss
135/288 pages
Rating: DNF
Such a bummer! This book seems really frustrating and as if things just don't make sense.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I probably would have DNF'd it, too.
ReplyDelete