A review by jenny_librarian
Generation Next by Terry Ronald, Oli White

Did not finish book.

2.0

Do not believe that everyone can be a writer. Anyone can be a writer, but not everyone should be.

I got to page 105 and had to give up. The plot, supposed to be about a group of friends making it big, was mostly centered around a typical geek white heterosexual teenage guy coming out of his shell in high school. The first hundred pages were mainly him pining after a girl and directing all his attention towards her. We're supposed to believe he made this amazing website with his friends, but there is more mentions of Ella in those 100 pages than anyone or anything else. And the best of all?
She friendzone him, yet I am 100% sure he spends the next few chapters trying to make her realize her boyfriend is an arsehole (because of course his "competition" could not be a good guy, she had to date the jerk)


There were also the pictures and text screenshot, most of which could have simply been described instead of pasted like a bad scrapbook (the GenNext card on page 75 should have been placed one sentence higher to make more sense, and the logo on page 59 didn't need it's own picture). I don't know if it's supposed to be a new, "hip" way of writing books for teenagers, but it just looks like laziness to me.

The pace of writing was also a bit dodgy, along with the writing itself that felt more like a friend talking to you than reading a book. If I want to have a friend talking to me, I will call or text them. When I read a book, I want to avoid the overuse of exclamation points and the side remarks every time the main character feels something.