Review: Poughkeepsie by Debra Anastasia

Livia McHugh always makes a point of smiling at everyone when she gets in to the station, giving people that small gentle curtesy in the bustle of the train station. That includes the homeless man who no one else seems to see, other then to nickname him Crazy, but to Livia he is Green Eyes. When she comes to his defense when she sees a group of boys threatening him they have an instant connection and starts an unusual friendship.

I wanted to like this book! There are so many good reviews and I thought I wan on to a winner, sadly for me that wasn’t the case and there were a few things about Poughkeepsie that just stopped me from enjoying it.

1. The Dialogue. Please tell me no one really speaks like this in real life, most the guys here were in their mid twenties, but spoke like teenagers, or at least how an adult might think a teenager speaks. On the opposite end of the spectrum, how Blake spoke, it was supposed to be all English gentleman style, but for some reason just made me cringe. Alot.

2. The Romance. Romance is my main genre, nearly everything I read has a heavy romantic element in it somewhere, but the romance in this was so sweet I was getting a sugar rush. I hate that. I hate the over romantic, our-souls-are-one, please-revirginize-me BS, I had to skip certain parts because I just couldn’t take it anymore. I was romanced out.

3. All dem Murders. What the frick!? This novel changed from a slow blooming romance to people dying left, right and centre. What the hell? It was just so weird and out of place, suddenly there were bad guys waving guns around, I don’t see how it enchanced the story.

4. Is this YA? This book seemed a lot like YA, the characters all acted like teenagers and if I wan’t told otherwise I would have assumed they were 16-18. Of course all the swearing would make it an adult book but then lack of any real sex would make it a YA, it was a little confusing. It isn’t that I like to pigeon hole books in to genres, but I would like to know what audience this book is aimed for.

All this is really negative and I am sorry about that, but this was a long book full of the things about romance I dislike the most and I know a lot of people have enjoyed this book, unfortunately I am not one of them.

[about-author author=”Debra Anastasia”]