The Bargaining by Carly Anne West

My rating: 1 of 5 stars


This book isn’t very good. The plot is decent, and reading it COULD have been a creepy, atmospheric experience, but it just wasn’t. It felt very juvenile - and yes I realize it’s a YA novel so I shouldn’t be dissing it based on this - but that doesn’t mean it has to be whiny and annoying. Which this was.

The character of Penny was awful. Anyone who got the “likable” vibe from her must have never actually met a likable person. She was defensive, inconsistent, immature and crazy (and not in a good way). Speaking of crazy - why did we even have to suffer through the Rae storyline? It literally added nothing to the primary plot line in my opinion, and just watered down the whole “seeing ghosts” in the woods aspect. Plus we never actually were told what happened to Rae and it all felt like a throwaway subplot to keep the reader semi-interested. Blah. I was rooting for Rae to be a figment of Penny’s f*ed up brain and not a real person at all - now THAT I can get behind.

Too many loose ends, too little explanations(Wtf was the point of Miller being able to “paint” a different outcome for his lost brother? And - if he could do this - why the hell did he wait TEN years?) and too many lame and unbelievable ghostly encounters. Next book please. I have been wanting to read Carly Anne West’s book “The Murmerings” for a long time now, but now I think I’ll pass and read something that doesn’t resemble a reject episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark.



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