Wide-Eyed Reader

Fair warning before I begin: I'm trying out a new review style for this, so we'll see how it goes! I honestly did expect to like this book, if not love it! I'm not the biggest Alice in Wonderland  fan, but I do love retellings of all stripes, and this one seemed particularly unique, so I was looking forward to it. Sadly, I was disappointed. I did stop reading this book on page 194 of the paperback edition, so keep that in mind throughout this review! There are several things I took issue with, so let's jump in, shall we? First: the love triangle. Because this book is YA, so it has to have a love triangle, apparently. Now, I'm not a big fan of love triangles, but I don't mind them if they're handled well and the love interests are actually worth it. In this case, neither is true.  The triangle itself seems thrown in just for the fun of it, and because love triangles are popular. What I'm more concerned with is the love interests themselves. Firs...

DNF at a little less than halfway through.  I just...didn't like it. CHARACTERS There are three main characters in Wink Poppy Midnight: Wink, the quirky girl-next-door, Poppy, your standard mean girl but somehow worse, and Midnight, a sweet boy who needs to grow a spine. Poppy is a terrible person, honestly one of the worst characters I've read about. Reading her perspective just made me angry, which I am sure was somewhat intended, but I didn't like it even still. I found her to be, quite frankly, infuriating, and the closest thing to a psychopath (or someone with antisocial personality disorder, for those who like psychology like me) that I've ever seen in a novel. She manipulates others for fun, as well as her own gain, and doesn't seem to care that she's a terrible person...unless it's Leaf telling her so. Wink, on the other hand, is kind of cool on first read, but with some time away from the book, I came to realize that she is every manic pix...