I read Nerve for two reason and two reasons only: The cover, because it's oddly beautiful, and because it's becoming a movie with Emma Roberts and Dave Franco. I really like them both so I wanted to pick this up before September when it's set to be release. That being said I don't know if it was worth it. Nerve got on my last one. It was so freaking boring! This book is about a live action truth or dare game (without the truth part), where teens can sign up and the more "extreme" the dares the better the prizes.
First off I had absolutely no connection to either one of our leads. Vee is one of the most annoying female protagonist I've ever encountered. She's not only annoying she's also both childish and whiny. There wasn't anything she couldn't find a reason to complain about. She drags on and complains about her home life, school life, friends, boys, and mostly the game SHE SIGNED UP FOR! I also struggled connecting with her because of her reason for signing up for the game was so slack, a freaking boy. Like come on?!? Seriously? Then she gets into the game and is the biggest baby ever about it. The preliminary dares are so easy that I found it very hard to believe anyone would be so torn up about it. Like one of them she has to walk into a coffee shop, convince a guy to buy her coffee, close her eyes, and sing 99 bottles, and then she cries. Why? Why are you crying?! I just don't understand. She cries most of the dares and a lot of them are just simple things like that. I also found the prizes she requested and that the game would give dumb and unbelievable. Plus her constant act of screaming at the cameras "someone call 911" drove me insane. When the Nerve screen says "time to shut it Vee" I about died laughing, because it was exactly how I felt too.
Oh, and the other thing she kept doing that worked me was when she would ask "omg how does this game know so much about me? Did they ask all my friends or something?" no hooker, they looked it up on your stupid facebook site thingy!!! How dumb can you be? You post your whole life on it. How did you not know? On top of all this Vee is constantly in the state of being grounded and all her "friends" think it's because of her grades, but her best friend knows it's for something else... When we find out why all I could think is "why the F would your parents ground you for this!!! what terrible parenting!". There's a million other ways to handle a situation like this and grounding isn't one of them. Ugh.
Now on to Ian. He turns out to be Vee's live rounds partner. Ian is supposed to be this mysterious-edgy-dreamy-good bad boy, and I just didn't buy into it. Plus his "bad" background story is never fully answered. That lack of Ian information made me laugh at the thought of these two being romantic interest. They're romance wasn't at all convincing. It's kind of hard to explain, but it's just not believable. When they would be all cutesy with one another I just didn't fall for it. It's kind of like they were both there so why not just make them be together. No real reason for it, just because. I would have been happier if they were just teammates and weren't thrown into being something more. As far as side characters, well they were awful. I never in a thousand years would think that teens would be this nasty and vile to each other. Maybe one, but several, nah. I hated how her "friends" were also so conveniently thrown into the mix. Why not Ian's friends? Why not any of the other players? I was also a bit sad when there wasn't a single side character I could even kind of like. I live for side characters and it's clear they can make or break and story, these broke it.
Nerve's plot promised us a fast paced, action packed book for fans of The Hunger Games... Really tired of books not like The Hunger Games being compared to the The Hunger Games. When Nerve started with an action packed cliff hanging prologue I was really excited to get answers for what the heck was happening... Gonna warn you after you're done with the book it'll hit you that the prologue was pointless and is never answered (or did I miss something when I dozed off for a few minutes?). After the odd boring start to the book I had hopes that things would pick up, but once the dares started and we see what they are I lost all faith. The dares are one boring event after another. I was hoping things would get crazy and would be more off the wall events like Lauren Oliver's Panic, but nope.
At one point when one of the dares actually starts getting insane, and there starts to be a lot of build up, and the suspense is finally happening... it just drops off and the payoff is just this messy sloppy thrown together ending. And God is this ending so unsatisfying.
I didn't have high expectations going into Nerve, but I was still hoping to get something... turns out I just gave it a bunch of time and got nothing in return.
1/10 Stars
-Angela
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