Instant Karma by Marissa Meyer Review

 Hello Everyone :)

 I pray today finds you all doing well, and I want to thank you all for joining me for another book review here on The Preppy Book Princess.

It's a perfect day for curling up with a great read, as it's cloudy, cool and it looks like we might even get more snow.

I'm one of those weirdos that much prefers cloudy days to sunny days usually, as they make the perfect atmospheric time to read and stay inside. 

How bout yourself? What's your favorite type of weather?

If you've been reading my blog for awhile, then you might have already heard me talk about my quest to find another really great secular young adult contemporary.

I haven't had the best luck on this journey so far, as most of the ones I've picked up have unfortunately been full of objectionable content, or include characters I can't really seem to connect with.

For today's review I'm here to share another young adult contemporary review with you all, and this one was a highly anticipated read.

Keep reading below for my full review to see if it lived up to my expectations.

Instant Karma by Marissa Meyer:

Source: Library

Publisher: Feiwel and Friends

Publication Date: November 3rd, 2020

Genre: Young Adult Fiction/Contemporary/Magical Realism

Synopsis:

Chronic overachiever Prudence Barnett is always quick to cast judgment on the lazy, rude, and arrogant residents of her coastal town. Her dreams of karmic justice are fulfilled when, after a night out with her friends, she wakes up with the sudden ability to cast instant karma on those around her.

Pru giddily makes use of the power, punishing everyone from public vandals to mean gossips, but there is one person on whom her powers consistently backfire: Quint Erickson, her slacker of a lab partner. Quint is annoyingly cute and impressively noble, especially when it comes to his work with the rescue center for local sea animals.

When Pru resigns herself to working at the rescue center for extra credit, she begins to uncover truths about baby otters, environmental upheaval, and romantic crossed signals—not necessarily in that order. Her newfound karmic insights reveal how thin the line is between virtue and vanity, generosity and greed, love and hate . . . and fate. 

(synopsis from goodreads)

My Review:

The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer is one of my all time favorite young adult series, and I was excited when I heard she was going to be tackling the contemporary genre for the first time. Magical realism is honestly kind of hit or miss for me, but considering who the author was, I decided to give this one a try, and I was really hopeful that I'd end up enjoying it.

Unfortunately, this one ended up not being quite what I was expecting. While I did end up enjoying certain components of it, it took a long while to get to those points, and I struggled for quite awhile with not wanting to dnf it along the way.

I really did enjoy Pru's family, and her best friend Ari. All were great secondary characters, and added a fun element to the story. I also adored the setting. Fortuna Beach seemed like a really fun community, and as someone who has always had an interest in marine life, I especially loved the emphasis on the local sea animal rescue center, and how it makes up quite a bit of the story.

I have to be honest though that I really struggled with Prudence's character. She's downright awful for the first two thirds of the story, and in my opinion, she didn't have even one likeable character trait. Towards the end of the story, the reader does see some growth in her character, but it was very hard to want to keep reading past her awfulness to get to that point. She's awful to almost everyone she comes into contact with, and she really rubbed me the wrong way.

Aside from that, I felt the first half of this story was really slow moving, and I struggled to get into it. I did really enjoy the last bit of it, but it didn't really make up for how boring I found the first two thirds or so to be.

I also didn't think the magical realism side of it was done that well, and I think the story almost would have been stronger if that had actually been left right out of it.

All in all, I didn't love it, I didn't hate it, but it falls somewhere in between. I much prefer this author's sci fi or fantasy stories to this one, and I'm not sure if I'd pick up another contemporary story from her in the future or not.

Final Rating: 3/5.

Have any of you guys read this one? If so, I'd love to hear what your thoughts were on it!

Drop me a comment below with your thoughts about this one, or let me know what book you're currently working your way through. 

Until next time guys, have a great rest of your day, and thanks so much for stopping by The Preppy Book Princess :)

This is not a sponsored post. All thoughts and opinions are my own. The photo does not belong to me, and all rights to the respective owners.