Great Review

Goodreads

TITLE: Great

AUTHOR: Sara Benincasa

PUBLISHER: Harper Teen

PUBLICATION DATE: 4/8/2014

PAGES: 272

MY RATING:

BACK COVER SUMMARY: Naomi Rye usually dreads spending the summer with her socialite mother in East Hampton. She sticks out like a sore thumb with her Chicago accent and her Doc Martens. But loner Naomi finds herself captivated by her mysterious next door neighbor, Jacinta. Only, Jacinta has her own reasons for drawing close to Naomi, and they include the beautiful and untouchable senator's daughter, Delilah Fairweather.

As the summer days slip by, Naomi discovers that Jacinta's carefully constructed world is hiding something huge, a secret that could undo everything. And Naomi must decide how far she is willing to be pulled into this web of lies and deception before she is unable to escape.

OVERALL IMPRESSION: I heard that this was a retelling of The Great Gatsby. It's been a really long time since I read The Great Gatsby (back in high school), but I saw the newest movie somewhat recently, so that's what I was remembering when I was coming the stories. I definitely see the parallels between the two, but the author put her own spin on it. 

Overall, this was a good book, but not spectacular. The first half of the book was pretty slow moving and I was wondering if the story was every going to go anywhere. But it does pick up during the second half as things finally start to happen.

CHARACTERS: I had a really hard time actually caring about any of the characters in this book. I'm not sure why, I just felt like they all made really dumb decisions and didn't really act in the best interest of anyone, including themselves. The character that I liked the most was Jacinta. She seemed like she was sweet and was genuinely interested in other people and how they were doing.

COVER: I'm drawn to the cover. I don't normally like covers with faces on them, but for some reason this one caught my attention. Maybe it's because the girl looks like Taylor Swift. I also really love the title font.

**I received an ARC of this book from Amazon Vine for my honest review.