Review: Every Other Day

Every Other Day by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
Genre: YA Paranormal
ISBN: 9781606842676
Published: December 27th 2011 by Egmont USA

Rating: 3

Warning: Spoilers ahead. And they'll probably be in all caps.

I have mixed feelings about Every Other Day.

The good:

1. It literally got my adrenaline pumping. Barnes has a good voice for YA novels.
2. I loved the protagonists and I hated the antagonists. I love Skylar, she's my favorite! I would want her to be my little sister. I love Bethany! (well, in a love-hate kind of way. I like her snark and her sarcasm.) I love Kali. She's totally my favorite kind of kick-ass heroine with supernatural powers.
   
   

The not so good:

1. I almost stopped reading this book a few times. Once right in the middle of chapter 2, because what was happening didn't really click with what the summary said was going to happen. I put it down for a while. When I finally picked it up again, it got exciting right at the end of that chapter.
   
   I tore through it until right before the halfway mark, when something happened and I took it the wrong way and thought "oh no, she's turning into a vampire, it's one of THOSE books," and got really mad, and wanted to quit again. But I kept reading and discovered my assumption was incorrect. And then I read some more and I discovered that she was, indeed, part vampire. I mean, I guess I should have known what with the hourglass filled with blood. But seriously?
   
   Point is, it was hard for me to read for an extended period of time, because I got frustrated.
   
2. I couldn't quite tell if it had a plot, or just a lot of events that happened. (See my post about plotless books here for more about that.)
   
3. It took me a good long time to get through it. For something so exciting, you would think it would be easier to read more than two or three chapters at a time. I'm not sure why: Maybe the drama was getting to my head and I just had to put it down.
   
4. WHAT THE CRAP IS WITH SKYLAR DYING OMIGOD SHE WAS MY FREAKING FAVORITE!!!!1 *breathes* okay Haley, you can handle this… be professional… *sobs and hits head against wall* Okay you can't just kill off a main character like that. Skylar was the reason I kept reading the book and then YOU KILLED HER.
   
5. VAMPIRE? REALLY? SERIOUSLY?? LIKE WE DON'T HAVE ENOUGH YOUNG ADULT VAMPIRE NOVELS OUT THERE, SOMEONE PLEASE WRITE SOMETHING ORIGINAL.
   
6. That was not an ending. It needed like, four more sentences. Also: the fact that it is totally the first book in a series? Gah. What's wrong with writing stand-alones?

Obviously, for me, there is more bad than good: but, it was addicting enough that I HAD to finish it.

So. You can decide if you want to read it or not. It really depends on your taste, and what you want in a YA novel.

Recommended for ages 14+