Thalia @ Pictures in the Words

This book was petty at best. I was immediately thrown (and put off) by the “group” narration of the characters—all the students with ESP tell the story, which makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, and it seemed more like a ploy to make a regular third-person omniscient narration more interesting. However, the story and characters were petty, boring, and completely asinine—again, at best. I honestly expected something far more engaging than the novel we were given, and it was obviously directed at an audience that is not able to handle any sort of mature content—and by mature, I mean girls who are able to go three seconds without thinking about their boyfriends and guys who can form a coherent thought that’s not about sex or girls. The entire book revolves around cheating girlfriends, best-friends-want-to-be-more-than-friends, getting a shy girl a boyfriend, and who is dating whom. There is no substance.  There is no point.

The writing was poor, at best—considering it’s written from “multiple” points of view. It’s unrealistic in that these teenagers all apparently have freaking rich parents and the government plays almost no role in the plot at all—really, this is one of those books that you just wish you could forget.

An ARC of this book was provided by the publisher, via NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.

What I Liked: Spoilers!

• I guess I shouldn’t have expected teenagers to think about much more than their love lives if they have ESP. Despite everything else, I felt a little bit of a connection with Olivia, who is incredibly shy and somewhat socially awkward because of it. Unlike the other characters, I didn’t really begrudge her using her ESP to figure out what to do on a first date, if she’s saying the right things to make the guy like her, etc. Considering her character, that part at least made a little bit of sense. However, this was really the only redeeming part of the novel.

What I Didn’t Like:

• I’m sure a group narration can be done well. I’ve never seen it before this novel, and this certainly didn’t accomplish what I think it set out to do. There are twenty-something kids who end up having ESP, and while the story only focuses on a handful of these (thank goodness), it’s still a pain in the butt. As a result, it was impossible to get close to any of the characters because everyone talks at once, everyone can hear each others’ thoughts, and there is no time in such a short novel to intimately know six or seven different characters. “They” wanted the reader to think of them as one person, and they certainly succeeded. The story was boring and monotonous because we kept hearing the same story a bunch of different times. It was poorly executed.

• I don’t really have patience for unrealistic teenagers. I can understand one or two kids in a class having rich parents—but every kid in this book seems to have families that are not only rich, but drop-dead rich—even the ones who live in apartments, even the ones who are supposedly “less” well-off than others; they are all a bunch of privileged teenagers. Maybe that explains the fact that none of them have an ounce of responsibility for themselves and their actions, but it was so unbelievable that I got a headache trying to suspend disbelief. The most ridiculous of all was Mackenzie’s fantastic “Sweet” sixteen birthday party. The text says, “Her brother and sister were flying in from Stanford. Her parents had spent a small fortune in deposits. They’d gone all out. They’d booked a hotel ballroom. Hired a DJ. Hired an event planner. Mailed out gorgeous invitations. Square, black, with cursive silver print.” First, I’m wondering why we care what the invitations looked like; secondly, what kind of sweet sixteen party is so outlandish that it somehow requires an event planner? I was so fed up with the characters’ stories and the way wealth was used for convenience. If these were real people, they would have scoffed at fifty thousand dollars from the government—Mackenzie’s parents were probably thinking they could break even on the girl’s party if they had taken the money.

• There are only so many pointless and immature comments you can take. I felt like I was reading through the many thoughts of fifth-graders who wanted to think they were mature—the sex jokes about parents, BJ’s entire character, Mackenzie’s hook-ups and relationships with both Cooper and Bennett—it was all just too much. None of the characters cared about doing the right thing; none of them were concerned with the legitimate future and what being able to read minds would do to them in the long run; none of them wanted to use it for anything other than furthering their relationships and hook-ups. Except maybe, Pi, but you kind of hate her anyway, because she’s an A+ student, but she justifies cheating off of the smartest kid in her class, and then gets pissed at the other “Espies” for cheating off of her. It was so juvenile that it bordered on completely unbearable. And this was the entire book.

Overall: There was pretty much nothing likable about this book, mainly because there was absolutely no substance, it revolves around a bunch of petty and immature teenagers who don’t have half a brain cell among all twenty-three of them, and the ESP is pretty much used as a dating tool rather than something to be taken seriously. There wasn’t anything redeeming about the plot or the characters, and there are so many books in the world that involves mind reading and teenagers that were much better done. It wasn’t enjoyable. I’m not sure what else to say aside from that.

(http://thaliasbooks.tumblr.com/post/93477780282/dont-even-think-about-it-review)