TL;DR entirely stereotypical paranormal romance complete with a stupid love V and a heroine with a questionable sanity
(finished 5/1/15)
So normally I try to avoid spoilers as much as possible, but there are some really frustrating things with Earthbound I'd like to get out of my system, so I'm breaking my rule and talking about the spoilers under the cut.
If you don't want to see the spoilers, I'm sticking my final TL;DR up here: Earthbound was really underwhelming compared to what I expected. I don't think I'll keep my copy.
Okay! If you're seeing this part of the review, I'm assuming you've already read the book or don't care about spoilers. Here's your last to chance to back out.
I bought this book as an ARC from a thrift store. I know. You're not supposed to do that. I knew it was a book on my to-read list and I was excited it was an ARC, even if it was about a year past its release date. As a fair warning, I'm not entirely sure that everything I'm commenting on made it to the final published version.
First of all, I think the summary on Goodreads and the back of the book (since it's paperback) are almost completely worthless. There was no real suspecting about her past on Tavia's part. Jay and Reese are not implicated in the crash to the extent the blurb implies. Benson is her "best friend and longtime crush" for all of eight months. I don't think eight months counts as "longtime".
To be honest, I hate blurbs that give away stuff that happens later in the book. I want my blurbs to explain the start of the book and the gist of the plot, not to tell me about how she "swore she'd never [reject Benson's love]" somewhere around the halfway mark, if not further in.
I think that's part of the reason I was underwhelmed. I expected more to happen that wasn't mentioned. Outlining it the way Earthbound did really removed the fun for me.
Gonna start with the romance since that's what I'm most frustrated with! First of all, I was pretty upset when I learned that Benson was someone Tavia had known less than a year. To me, "longtime crush" implied that they'd gone to school together or had otherwise known each other for at least longer than two years. Nope. Not at all. And for half of that, Benson was apparently lying about having a girlfriend because he didn't want to admit his feelings! I find that really stupid. I don't think I would want to get with a guy if he lied consistently like that, even if I did like him.
(Pretty big spoiler alert: that is not the only thing he lies about. Not by a long shot. I'll leave it at that.)
And this whole thing with Quinn! The love V is established by about the 50 page mark, and if it weren't for a vague sense of curiosity and a "I paid for this book" mentality, I would've most likely put it down. I wasn't invested in Tavia and Benson at all, so throwing this guy who's basically a ghost into the mix wasn't any kind of selling point. Not to mention that Tavia was incredibly wishy-washy with which boy she was thinking about. She was making out with Benson as soon as they confessed their "love" to each other (which yes, I definitely made disgusted faces at), and then almost immediately after she was pining after Quinn, who she hadn't even talked to.
There's a lot of italics in that paragraph. I'm sorry. I really wanted to smack Tavia. I don't think she had any excuse to play with Benson's heart like that, brain injuries or not. If you don't know who you want to be with, sit down and think about it! Don't just string one of them along because you're too thirsty.
My patience for Tavia dwindled pretty quickly. I could understand her up to a certain point, because surviving what she did is traumatic as anything, but she threw caution out the window as soon as Quinn entered the picture. We do not need any more girls like that in YA. We need more girls who don't need no man and / or girls who don't let their hearts speak louder than their brain.
Plot-wise, I was pretty taken off-guard. The plot felt slow at first up until the "oh no Reese and Jay are keeping secrets from me" point, and then it turned into a "we gotta run from the authority" plot. It wasn't that interesting. The concept of the Earthbound was something the blurb didn't touch on, which was good I guess, but it wasn't all that phenomenal. It just turned even more stereotypical YA Paranormal Romance than it already was with the love V where one of the boys was a mirage.
Speaking of "the authorities": the adults in charge of Tavia were all idiots. You don't just say "you don't understand, this is so much bigger than you know" and then not actually explain it. That's why she ran away! Because you kept secrets from her! From the explanations later in the book, I can understand why they told her next to nothing, but I don't think that makes it right. Tavia had every right to be mad at them.
Touching back on the plot twist with Benson: it wasn't surprising. It was funny. And sooooo stereotypical of Paranormal Romance. I had some comments I was going to make about Benson, but because they tie into this plot twist, I'm going to keep quiet about them. I already mentioned it a little bit in passing.
One thing I noticed was how easy it apparently was for Tavia to disappear off the radar after the plane crash. Someone is going to know who the sole survivor was, and I find it really dubious that Tavia could receive adequate medical attention when her injuries are being written off as from a car crash. That's why they tell you not to lie to paramedics.
Oh man this review was even longer than I initially expected, and I already knew I was gonna have a lot to say. I'm gonna end it with two really snarky responses to lines I sticky-noted because of Tavia's stupidity.
'Maybe I could cope better if my stomach wasn't getting angry with me. But it's still roiling and churning despite the pile of mini candy bars I ate with Benson.
Or perhaps because of them.' (pg 100)
TAVIA WHAT MAKES YOU THINK EATING STRAIGHT-UP SUGAR ON AN EMPTY STOMACH IS A GOOD IDEA
'It's like every horror movie I've ever seen. The kind where the stupid girl ends up dead.' (pg 171)
Yep, that's definitely you, Tavia. Your stupidity should have killed you by now if it weren't for your plot armor.
Okay. I'm done. If you read up to this point, thank you so much for putting up with my rant. I felt like I needed to share it with the world.
On a slightly related note to everything: I read Pike's Wings back in middle school and I liked it enough, but looking back on people's reactions to Earthbound and reading the reviews for Wings for the first time is making me wonder if I'd see it the same way five years later. I'm considering a re-read of Wings as soon as I can get my hands on it. I've been itching to go back to the library.
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