Book Review: A Week of Mondays by Jessica Brody

A Week of Mondays by Jessica Brody

Goodreads | Amazon

Series: No

Release date: August 2nd 2016

Rating: I don't like her

“Obviously, I didn’t know the couple’s names or anything about them, so I made up my own names and gave them backstories.”

Source

Yup.  Basically, this is what I spend my life doing.  Does anyone else over fixate when they run into sentences like this?  Small personality quirks of your own that you find in books. 

Onto actual things about the book:

Ellison Sparks is a sixteen year old high school junior who is not having a good day.  And getting to the end of the day was just the start of the story. 

I am not sure how I feel about Ellison.  There were lines (starting with the opening line) that were incredibly relatable.  I also liked that there was some character development.  The Ellison and the start of the book grows and learns.  But I felt as if I wanted her to be more.  I think that it came down to a case of the author telling and not showing.  “I feel angry and confused.” As opposed to showing us how Ellison was angry and confused. 

One theme that was explored was the idea of changing yourself to fix the expectations of the people around you.  I think that if you aren’t really sure of who you are and what you want yet it is really easy to just become who other people think you are.  Week of Mondays shows how who other people think of you impacts your own view of your identity.  It also explores what happens after you become aware of this. 

There are, of course, obvious parallels to Before I Fall but A Week of Mondays is much lighter and less “important” for lack of a better word.  Ellison is much less internal and angst ridden than Sam.  It made for a quick read but I am not sure that it will stick with me in any way.  If you were going to choose between the two Before I Fall is a far superior book.

The romance in the book is cute if pretty predictable.  I think that that part of the book was overlooked a bit with all the plot points that had to be tied up every “day”.

Final verdict: Cute, readable, but nothing earth shattering.