I am back with another book review, today it is The Odds of Loving Grover Cleveland by Rebekah Crane.
Going into this book, I wasn't really too sure what to expect since I was going in pretty much blind.
The story follows 16-year-old Zander who is spending the summer at a camp for at-risk teens. There she meets Cassie, a self-diagnosed manic-depressive-bipolar-anorexic, Grover who has a chance of developing schizophrenia like his father, and Bek, a pathological liar.
I think this book was a decent summer camp book, but I didn't really get the depth of emotion I usually find in books dealing so heavily with mental illnesses. This book was reminiscent of It's Kind of a Funny Story by Ned Vizzini but lacked the depth that I found in that one.
Of course, the characters and their illnesses are important to the story, but I didn't really feel like they were a person outside of their label. Each character was fairly flat and I didn't find myself particularly drawn to any one of them. Obviously, I empathized with their situations but I felt like I couldn't connect with them on a deeper level.
Even though the title revolves around the romance within the book, I didn't find myself particularly drawn to it. I thought it seemed a little unnecessary - we can have a book where two teens don't fall in love - scandalous, I know. Maybe I'm being a bit harsh but the romance felt too forced in this book. Not only that but when the relationship between Zander and Grover develops more, Zander completely abandons Cassie, a friend who really needs her. I understand getting swept up but I thought it unlikely that she would leave her friend behind like that. I also felt like for a camp where no relations such as that were appropriate, the counselors seemed pretty lax.
I did find the ending a little predictable, both with what happened with Cassie at the camp and later after everything. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but I just felt like I saw it coming.
Overall, a decent book but a little flat where it mattered.