Thursday 13 June 2013

Mila 2.0

No one suspects what she’s made of…
After the sudden death of her father, Mila’s at a new school, trying to fit in and falling for mysterious sexy Hunter. But her world slams upside down in a heartbeat when a car accident reveals a secret she never knew; a secret about herself.

Mila is devastated to learn that her memories are just chimeras, her dreams untrue. She can’t even rely on her emotions to tell her who she is. So how can she grieve for her father or feel the way she does about Hunter? And why is her mom running scared?

Worse still, who are the creepy stalkers so desperate to get their hands on her…?


I had high hopes for Mila 2.0, as the blurb for Debra Driza's debut novel sounds unique and interesting.  Obviously I overlooked the part that mentions 'mysterious sexy Hunter'.  I wonder why my brain always skips over certain phrases in blurbs that I should recognise as red flags and sirens saying avoid...

Lets start of on a good note.  I thought that the airport sequence was rather clever.  I've not read anything set in an airport before, so it was pretty cool to imagine Mila and her mother navigating their way through a busy terminal.  Unfortunately, that was about all I liked. 

While the plot may be interesting, the character of Mila is that of a stereotypical YA heroine.  Whines a lot, life is so unfair, friends who would stab her in the back in an instant, you know the type.  In the beginning, when it was just Mila moaning about her mother and trying to grieve for her father, I could put up with the who woe is me shtick.  However, once Mila meets the new boy with the lop-sided smile (don't even get me started on lop-sided smiles....), I knew my interest in Mila 2.0 would fade rapidly.  Even though there's much more Mila should be concerned about, all she cares about is getting back to the boy she has JUST met.  I found myself repeatedly screaming, "There's more to life than Hunter, you idiot!" for the majority of the book.

I hated Mila's narration so much that even though I finished the book, it was more a case of going through the motions and not actually processing what was happening in the story.  I couldn't honestly tell you what happened in the final third of the book, which is a shame as there are some great ideas hidden within the annoyances.  I hate to be harsh but Mila 2.0 was simultaneously infuriating and disappointing.  Why go to all the effort of creating a fascinating situation and then wasting it on a crappy, cookie-cutter character that I can find in multiple other YA books?  If only Driza could have created a different character, someone with a spine (or at least grew throughout the book to have a spine)and who wasn't prone to instalove, then maybe this could have been an infinitely better read.

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