Tempest by Julie Cross

Date Finished: 25 October 2013

Rating: 1*

View on Goodreads.


Get ready, everyone, because I did not like this book. At all. Please, put down your pitchforks for a moment so I can explain myself, and then you are free to stalk me and make me read it again as a form of torture.

I’m going to be completely honest here. When I picked up this book in April, it was only because I needed something to read in the car while I drove for seven hours to go on holiday. I didn’t end up reading it then – I read The Perks of Being a Wallflower instead – but when I did pick it up on holiday, I couldn’t even stomach ten pages. And that’s saying something. When I’m on holiday, I read anything and everything. I read the entire Twilight series, the entire Fallen series, and Forgotten while I was at the beach, which shows that my tolerance level for bad writing and soppy storylines is quite high when there’s sand and sea around me. But I couldn’t even get through TEN PAGES of Tempest.

I picked it up again on Thursday, because I physically cannot stand the sight of unfinished books on my bedside table. Unfortunately, because I read the first ten pages on holiday in April, I had to put my brain through the emotional trauma of reading them again. I nearly killed myself.

Let me just explain why I hated it, seeing as me telling you why I read it is only making me realize how much I need mental help.

1. The writing style.
It was awful. I felt so detached from the storyline, and I HATE it when authors do that. That’s the reason we read, isn’t it? To be dragged into someone else’s world and forget what it’s like to live on this planet for a little while. Well, Tempest didn’t do that for me. I mean, come on. The first line is: “Okay, so it’s true. I can time travel.” That is seriously lame. That first line is what makes you want to read the novel! It is supposed to grip you, turn you inside out, make you question the meaning of life! Not just, “Yeah, bro… So, like, I’m a time traveller…” No. Just… No.

2. The characters.
I could not stand them. They were so two-dimensional and boring. Jackson was useless at best. Holly was just pathetic. They had no strong emotions – and this could be attributed to the writing, which completely restricted them to the emotional level of a Barbie doll. Jackson was just so… dreary. I don’t understand. He finds out his dad is a member of the C.I.A., and he’s just like, “I think my dad’s a member of the C.I.A.!” No kidding, genius. And then Holly dies, and he’s just like, “I think I’ll just go back in time, now, and leave my girlfriend DYING instead of, I don’t know, CALLING AN AMBULANCE. OH WAIT she's breathing. Well, it's too late now BYE HOLLY.”

3. Insta-love
Insta-love has got to be my absolute worst aspect of teenage romance novels. It’s literary suicide. If you ever need a reason to set your hair on fire, insta-love is enough. It’s soppy and clichéd and ridiculous and completely ruins the romance. You do not need any writing technique or talent to write a novel with insta-love in it, and unfortunately, all we see is a tacky, irritating re-telling of Romeo and Juliet. We get it. We’ve all read Romeo and Juliet, we’ve seen insta-love at it’s finest, and it was beautiful and sweet the first time. Now it just feels like you’re recycling everybody else’s garbage and feeding it to us on a dirty plastic spork.

4. The ending.
Honestly, Jackson, you are absolutely pathetic. You didn’t even fight for your insta-love. You could’ve just left her for dead on page 28 and it would’ve been better than spending the WHOLE FREAKING BOOK FIGHTING FOR HER, AND THEN GOING BACK IN TIME TO PREVENT YOURSELF FROM EVER MEETING HER. Really? No, I am just so angry right now. I struggled through 334 pages of your stupid love story just for you to be an idiot. I’m so done. SO. DONE.

Never again. Never, never again.

I hate giving one star to books. I really do. But try as I might, I could not find a single thing in Tempest that could possibly give it a boost up to two stars. I think the one star was only because I managed to finish it without scratching out my eyeballs.