[Review] Dying Wish - Margaret McHeyzer

Summary: I have three major loves in my life: my family, my best friend Becky, and ballet. Elijah Turner is quickly becoming the fourth.

He's been around as long as I can remember. But now he's much more than just the annoying guy at school.

My life was working out perfectly...until it got turned upside down. (Pub Date: Jan 08, 2017)

Honest review based on an ARC provided by Netgalley. Many thanks to the publisher for this opportunity.

This was disappointing. While I have noticed mine is the unpopular opinion, I don't understand how everyone seems to think differently.

Alice dedicates all of herself to ballet until Elijah suddenly shows interest in her, and she notices herself reciprocate. But things change and put that fairy-tale love to test.

I can't decide what was the biggest problem, the fact this was supposed to be two books—one focused on Alice and another on her best friend Becky—or how suddenly people fell for each other. Not love at first sight but as irritating as any kind of instalove.

Back to the first problem, I'd surely like this book better had the author organized it better and made Becky the sole protagonist. Alice is nice and too nice. They literally say that and repeat it through the whole book. Boring and surely untrustworthy.

Most of the development follows the either all-too-sudden or the too-much-luck patterns. Even though I can't complain about grammar or orthography, the story didn't flow. I've read debut writers with more fewer issues.

I try to evaluate whether this just not my genre or whether I read the book during some unfortunate period already filled with similar plots. I mean, people falling in love while fulfilling some to-do list may fit this but I actually love the trope—although in the case of this book, it was more like falling in love during the first item and spending the rest of the time angsting whether to go for it.

I'm sure a younger reader will be less critical and focus more on the overflowing emotions, which the book had plenty to offer. The characters didn't lack maturity but after you've read so many books with better outlines, you tend to feel bothered.

Not a bad idea, not a bad story and as too-perfect as Alice is described to be, not even she was a bad character. I believe the problem was development, this could benefit from more tinkering in my opinion.

Rating: 2 out 5.