Review - 13 Little Blue Envelopes

So my first review is for 13 Little Blue Envelopes by Maureen Johnson

I had to order this in from another library as ours is a relatively small one and doesn't stock a wide range of Young Adult books. I mainly ordered it as I follow Maureen Johnson on twitter and she seems like my kind of crazy but her own personality doesn't transfer to the book.

The premise is simple; Ginny has to follow the instructions in each of the 13 envelopes and she can only open the next one when she has completed the task of the previous one.

It's a strange little book and it doesn't take too long to read, maybe about 4-6 solid hours if you read in one go like I do. Only in this case it was spread out over a few days as I was busy and ill(on two seperate days obviously).

The first thing that struck me was how dated the names are. Maybe that's just me but Ginny, Peg (who granted is a middleaged woman) and Miriam (Ginny's best friend) all seem to be from the 70's. Not that it bothers me it just made the story feel older than it was supposed to.

Ginny is our main character. She's American. We're not given much description about her other than she's got dark chocolate hair and is supposed to be very pretty. I'm not sure if this is supposed to be a 'put yourself in their shoes' story but I felt detatched from her, never really taking her to heart. She seems very wispy, like one gust of wind would blow away her personality. She's likeable enough though. She just isn't fully formed enough for me.

The story (without giving it away) is something different than I've read before but it felt hurried. As Ginny moves on from place to place characters get dropped and left behind, never to be talked about again except for a special few. I never felt I got a true feel of all the places she was, it was just 'she's in blah, now she's in blah'. The pace of the book for me was too slow and it didn't have enough to make me devour the pages like I do with books I love, I literally cannot put them down. This one I had to force myself to finish and even when I did it felt stilted. There was a small bit of character development for Ginny but that was about it.

The cover as well is really not right for the style of the book (UK cover that is). It completely gives the wrong image to a reader.

All in all an ok read but nothing spectacular and certainly nothing memorable.

Do you agree? Disagree? Drop me a comment and let me know.