Disappointing on account of it being one of my most anticipated YA releases of the year. TTOJL felt like a first draft that could've been a good book if fleshed out more. As it is, it's kind of a mess.
My biggest issue is probably the plot progression. It all just felt so rushed and half-realized, plot points thrown on the page rather than carefully progressed through. There's not much world-building, details that are half-explained if not info-dumped on you, like Jake's "medium mentor" Ms. Josette explaining how ghosts get trapped in the living realm.
Half of the book is from the POV of a school shooter. The problem here is you can't avoid conveying his motivations like this without garnering sympathy, which is careless. Honestly these sections felt like they were only included because there wasn't enough material without them.
What could have saved this book was Jake and Allister, but unfortunately it fell short there too. To start with, Allister isn't introduced until around a third of the way into the book. And then he's barely in the story at all, seems to only exist to be Jake's love interest.
Premise was great, execution wasn't.
My biggest issue is probably the plot progression. It all just felt so rushed and half-realized, plot points thrown on the page rather than carefully progressed through. There's not much world-building, details that are half-explained if not info-dumped on you, like Jake's "medium mentor" Ms. Josette explaining how ghosts get trapped in the living realm.
Half of the book is from the POV of a school shooter. The problem here is you can't avoid conveying his motivations like this without garnering sympathy, which is careless. Honestly these sections felt like they were only included because there wasn't enough material without them.
What could have saved this book was Jake and Allister, but unfortunately it fell short there too. To start with, Allister isn't introduced until around a third of the way into the book. And then he's barely in the story at all, seems to only exist to be Jake's love interest.
Premise was great, execution wasn't.