Greetings! I am in fact alive. I honestly didn't realize I haven't posted something for two months. I guess time passes quickly! But never fear, I come bearing a Christmas present: a new blog! So let us proceed to our next destination!
In Instant Karma, Prudence Daniels is your typical smart girl. A hard worker, overachiever, and a bit of a control freak, Pru makes sure the outcome of her work is perfect, especially as high school graduation looms closer. But Pru's perfect grades come crashing to the ground when she gets a devastating C on her end-of-year project- all thanks to her horrible lab partner Quint Erikson. The entire project, Quint did nothing but slack off and show up late, and Pru isn't going to let her straight-A reputation be ruined by a charming looser.
Prudence has the opportunity to redo the project, but only if Quint agrees. And unfortunately, Quint hates Pru as much as she hates him. But everything changes after Pru passes out at a karaoke night, and wakes up with the magic ability to inflict karma on anyone she chooses. The popular girl talks smack about her brother? Looks like she'll have to learn her lesson. A man littering on the boardwalk? It would be a shame if someone ruined his fancy shoes. But even with the ability to teach bad people a lesson, Prudence soon learns that her new powers aren't as foolproof as she though them to be, and looks can be deceiving.
When fate leads her to volunteering with Quint at the local ocean rescue center, Prudence finds herself strangely drawn to Quint, discovering sides of him she never knew before. All while saving sea creatures, figuring out her powers, and falling in love with the boy she hates the most, Pru will have to right a wrong she herself caused.
My thoughts
I'm going to get straight to the point here; I didn't have high hopes for this book. If you know me, you should probably know I hate romance. It's a genre that tricks lovesick and people who've never been in a relationship unrealistic expectations, all while perpetuating toxic romantic relationships. My dislike for romance literature was not my only cause for being suspicious of Instant Karma; I was also unsure if Marissa Meyer could pull it off.
You see, every single one of Marissa's previous novels have been fantasy and sci-fi. Of course, there has been a bit of romance in all of those books, but they were never the main focus. While still possible to mess up, it's easier to put in romance as a little side plot, but then you focus back on slaying wolf hybrids or beating up villains. To my knowledge, Marissa had never written a full on romance book, and I was a bit worried it wouldn't be as solid as I expected from her other series.
Imagine my relief when I read Instant Karma and found she had pulled it off with only minimal bumps and bruises. Unlike other romances that enjoy putting abusive and toxic relationships in the same ship that is the "the main characters hate each other but then they fall in love" trope, Instant Karma gives us something that the genre severely lacks: good, believable relationships!
Prudence and Quint are very contrasting personalities. Pru takes pride in her success, but Quint cares nothing for his grades or schoolwork. But unlike Pru, Quint puts love and care into the work he gives the time for. He doesn't think that the first project he did with Prudence was his highest priority, because he was working his butt off at his mom's rescue center. He loves animals, and would rather focus all his energy into that.
But this is also what really annoys me about Quint. He doesn't really care about Pru's project, even though he knows how much she cares about it. Pru spend the whole book trying to convince him to redo it, and gosh, that's kind of a poopy move on Quint's part.
One thing that the two characters share however, is their stinginess. At first, both Pru and Quint refuse for being jerks to each other, but as Pru begins to learn about Quint more, she becomes more and more apologetic to him. Quint however, is not. While he does treat Prudence better over time, it takes him nearly entire the whole book for messing up her project, even though it was 70 percent his fault it went awry (not letting Pru off the hook for considering Quint to be a dunce though,) he's also very quick to accuse Pru of stealing the money, but I don't really blame him for that, because he has fair reason to be suspicious of her.
All in all, Instant Karma has its faults, but is a breath of fresh air in a genre littered with stupid and appalling literature. I should've known to never doubt Marissa, and I'm happy to have been proved wrong. Instant Karma was a joy to read, and would make a perfect last-minute Christmas gift!
Keep Reading! -Valkyrie
(I don't know where else to put this, but I would just like to say another reason I was doubtful of Marissa's romance writing skills is because I absolutely hated Nova and Adrien's relationship in Renegades, but I know some people do. Maybe I'll get more into why I hate them together in a future blog. That would be rather compelling.)
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