13 to Life by Shannonn Delany

Title: 13 to Life
Author: Shannon Delany
Publication: St. Martin's Press (2010)
ISBN 9781429922180
Sales Rank 9470
Age Range Young Adult
Format eBook ($9.99)
Series: Yes. Beasts and  BFF's (0)
                   13 to Life (1)
                   Secrets and Shadows (2)

Everything about Jessie Gilmansen's life changed when her mother died. Now even her hometown of Junction is changing. All Jessie wants is to avoid more change. But showing a hot new guy around Junction High, she's about to discover a whole new type of change. Pietr Rusakova is more than good looks and a fascinating accent--he's a guy with a dangerous secret. And his very existence is sure to bring big trouble to Jessie's small town. It seems change is the one thing Jessie can't avoid. . .

~*~*~*~*~*~

This is the second book that I have bought with my Nook. Recently I have taken to going to the nearby Barnes and Noble to read up on some books that I had been iffy about buying. It has been a really good idea because some of them I realised were boring before I got the the third chapter and I did not have to waste anymore of my time on them. 13 to Life fell somewhere in the middle.

My first taste of this world was through Beasts and BFF's. It is a preview of this book so you can see how Jessie and her friends acted before the Rusakova's came into the picture. That is the simple way of saying it. In reality is is very complicated. Because when I first started reading 13 to Life it was told in the same point of view as Beasts and BFF's and I was floored by how different she sounded. I was almost sure that they were completely different people. It almost seems as if in the preview Jessica is less obsessed about the death of her mother than in the actual series. I became confused. But later when I connected the dots I was forced to concede that Jessica's mother was indeed dead in Beasts and BFF's. Finally after reading 13 to Life I would say that Beasts and BFFs would not have been worth it if it had not been free.

13 to Life. It has some parts that I skimmed. It has some parts that I could not lift my eyes from. However it seemed incomplete to me. The ending did not really seem like the ending. I half believed that my Nook just did not download the whole book because I felt that there needed at least one more chapter to the book or something. I think that author was going for more of a cliffhanger effect but she missed the mark. Because of that you are left with a fifty foot drop and more questions and no answers. None of the loose ends in this book were tied.

My favorite character was Anabelle Lee. Why? She might have only been in a few dozen pages but I have a soft spot for the odd younger sister, I am the odd younger sister with her nose in a book, and because I loved that poem. It is sweet and sad and it saw mentioned in the movie Holes, my favorite book in 6th grade. Second had to be Pietr because who doesn't like the mysterious bad boy?

Least favorite characters? Jessie and Sarah. Yes, I realise that I dislike two of the main characters yet I am still claiming to like the book. You can bite me. Jessie was one of those self-sacrificing people. At some point however it gets annoying. Her motto is that life is not fulfilling unless you live it for someone else. I personally think that my dislike of her is evident by that one sentence. All of her problems are mostly self made. She likes Pietr but she pushes him on Sarah. There is a secret about her mothers death and she does a dumb thing after that too. I almost quit this book in the first chapter because her obsession with a wolf attack in another town got on my nerves.

Anyway, before I give too much away lets move on to Sarah. I can't really say why I dislike her because this is a major plot secret that I don't feel justified with giving away. However I do feel alright in saying that her propensity to correct people was annoying. I did that for a while when I was younger because was bugged by what I saw as an obvious insult to proper grammar and now I understand why people were annoyed by me. That and her annoying habit of emphasizing her SAT like words in every sentence she spoke.

Still it was and interesting read and if you sludge through the beginning I like to think that Jessica became less annoying the more you read.