Jenn's Book Jems

*Just a warning, there may be some Dragonfly spoilers in this review.*

So Dragonfly was a sweet surprise for me. I really didn’t expect to like it as much as I did and it was a welcome surprise. Because of that feeling, I went into Undertow with slightly high expectations and unfortunately, I was a tad disappointed.

Dragonfly had Anna confused by her feelings for the mysterious Jack Kyser and falling for her longtime friend Julian. The story ended with Anna finding out a huge secret that linked both of her crushes. I was super excited to sit down and find out what happens next. Does Anna tell Jack? Does she tell Julian? Does she tell anyone?

Well…we still don’t know.

Undertow was more like a filler story – one giant back story. At the end of Dragonfly, Bill Kyser gives Anna three journals with the hopes that after reading them, she would keep their secret. So from there, we journey into the land of lost journals.

Journal #1: Meg Weaver.
Journal #2: Alexandra LaSalle
Journal #3: Bill Kyser

Each journal follows the exact same timeline and the exact same events with some variance due to different lives. Let’s start with Meg’s. I almost couldn’t read hers. While I felt bad for her knowing what her fate was, I really could not stand her as a person. She was extremely vain and only cared what people thought of her. She was prestige and money, and manipulated everyone around her to get what she wanted, including her husband – which, I’m sorry, is wrong. Alex’s journal to me was the most realistic and most relatable. And Bill’s was just…weird? It seemed extremely out of character that he would have a journal. This was a man who busted his butt to graduate college early and then started up his business right after. When would he have found time to write in a journal?

Then there was the journal writing itself. They were written just like a book, not journal entries. This style took me completely out of the story and I couldn’t relate properly to them because my head kept shouting, “This is not how people write journals!” At the end of the book, the author has a note stating that she took liberties and wrote the journals as actual stories instead of journal entries. Maybe if that had been stated at the beginning of the book I may feel a little differently, I honestly don’t know.

While this book wasn’t amazing to me, I am still very intrigued on how it’s going to wrap up and am still excited to read the final one. And a series I would recommend for some quick beach reading.

I received an e-copy of this book from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

This review can also be seen here on my blog.