[Review: Pretty Dark Nothing by Heather L. Reid]

"Pretty Dark Nothing"
Author: Heather L. Reid
Series: I think so?
Pages: 321
Genre: YA, Paranormal
Date Published: April 23rd, 2013
Publisher: Month9Books
Format Read: eARC provided by publisher (via NetGalley) for honest review

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Summary:

It’s been twenty three days since Quinn has slept for more than minutes at a time. Demons have invaded her dreams, stalking her, and whispering of her death. The lack of sleep and crippling fear are ruining her life. Energy drinks and caffeine pills don’t make a dent. When Quinn dozes off in the school hallway, Aaron, an amnesiac with a psychic ability, accidentally enters her nightmare. The demons are determined to keep them apart, and Aaron from discovering the secret locked away in his memory. Together, they could banish the darkness back to the underworld for good. That is, unless the demons kill them first.

-Goodreads 

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My Thoughts:

This book is just what the title says.  It starts out with pretty writing that just happens to be really dark and disturbing and then it fades into a story about nothing.  The first quarter of the book had me intrigued!  I wanted to know what was going to happen and I loved the atmosphere that Reid created, but as the book kept going, it donned on me that nothing was happening to progress the plot and just like that I became bored with the story.

Quinn had her life together at one point.  She was the head cheerleader, was dating the main jock and had tons of friends and then her dad left and some other stuff happened and her life fell apart.  Oh and she doesn't sleep much because demons are haunting her.  Great concept right?  It was.  But Quinn's reactions to the things that happened to her weren't the ones that you were expecting.  She was weak and I wanted her to be strong.

Then Aaron comes into the picture and he can tell that something is off about Quinn, plus he has this ability that he can't really explain and all he knows is that he died at some point but came back.  He's missing huge gaps in his history, because he can't remember and so you don't get to know either.  

I guess what ended up really frustrating me about this book is that while Reid created some awesome flawed characters and a really potentially cool plot line, she ended up focusing on the drama of high school and a relationship that made me want to pull my hair out.  The fact that Quinn couldn't pick between her ex-boyfriend Jeff and sweet Aaron was detrimental to the plot in my opinion.  All of this drama made the really cool scary and well written horror style scenes stand out in a bad way.  If it had been more about that I know I would have liked the book more.

Talk about withholding information, the actual plot line got thrown at you in the last chapter out of nowhere.  And it was actually a really good plot.  But throwing all the info at me at the end when I had already read the whole book wasn't what I wanted.  If those things had been blended into the story this one could have been a winner.

So, this book didn't work for me.  Not that the writing was bad, it wasn't.  It was the execution of the story that didn't work for me.  Less love triangle drama and more world building would have worked better for me.         

Rating:

2 Unicorns = Something just didn't work for me!