This book was a mess for me. Some parts I hated, some parts I loved. But the thing that pulled it out for me was the ending theme: You don't NEED a man to be happy!

While I found the whole "living in 1962" idea charming, it wasn't well thought out by our heroine, Mallory. (She earns extra points for her name.) She didn't take into account having to use a computer at school or even using her alarm clock to get up.

Most of the story was nice enough, but what always gets me is a book that ends without a lot of things really getting wrapped up. A few non-closures are fine. That's reality. But when someone, like Mallory's mom, does something really stupid and selfish that hurts her kids and her husband, lies about money and then tries to play the victim; and she get nothing but a mild reprimand that barely lasts a page and is quickly forgotten....Well, I take issue. Teens aren't known to forgive so easily. I know I'm 30 and still get angry with things my mom did when I was 15. So the whole glancing-over of a pretty major plot point is what really dropped this down in rating for me. I just hated her mother and was so unhappy with nothing really happening to her.

Besides that, let's be picky: they dressed up as The Jetsons and couldn't even get the maid's name right! It's ROSY not Ruby, dummy.

This book had a lot of potential. But it fell so far short of what it could have been, simply because nobody seemed to edit this. It was full of misplaced prepositions that made my English minor scream. There were question marks everywhere, in places where there clearly wasn't a question. Missing quotation marks, misspelled words, and poor sentence structures.

If only someone had proofread this!

The plot itself was dull. What looked like an epic fantasy turned into mostly a lot of explaining and not showing. Things that should have been shocking and freaky to a teenager didn't get much reaction. And the main character seemed to want to burst into tears at the slightest angry look.

This book could have been good if it had just been carried out properly.

Let me first say that I swear this is JD Scott on the cover:

The Scott Brothers are infiltrating my entire life, I swear.

Anyway, boy was this bad. Not bad as in "makes you angry" but bad as in "I got all my inspiration about being a teen from Mean Girls, Grease and bad teen dramas". This book contained every teen stereotype I can imagine. It was a treasure trove of YA tropes. I'm not sure I've ever read one with so many. Let's count, shall we?

1. Mary Sue Jessica is the main character. She's a beautiful cheerleader that everyone wants to be. Her parents are rich, she drives a silver convertible, and she lives in SoCal in a mansion. People love her. She's smart. And she is dating the quarterback.

2. The mysterious bad-boy Tommy shows up the first day of senior year on a motorcycle. He wear tight white t-shirts. He has a leather jacket. He doesn't talk much and reads classic like Wuthering Heights. He also write poetry.

3. The insta-love The very first paragraph of the entire story is Jessica watching Tommy get off his bike and walk into school. And she already wants him and feels connected to him. IN THE FIRST PARAGRAPH! By 15 %, she can't get him off her mind, despite never even speaking to him. Their first conversation is him practically stalking her to tell her he's drawn to her and that they share a connection. They're in LURVE.

4. The misunderstood girl Jessica is the most popular girl in school but doesn't like it. She actually hates being a cheerleader. She wants to write poetry in her room alone. She wants to be an actress. But she has to fake who she is because it's expected of her.

5. The mean girls Jessica's former friends (by the end of the book) are your typical mean girls. They hate everyone and every thing just because they can. Because everything is beneath them. Even Jessica. They kept her as a friend just to have the "enemy" close. They're snooty, bitchy and vain. And they turn on Jess the second to dumps her super-jock boyfriend.

6. The quarterback Yes, Jessica dated the quarterback. And he's exactly what any teen drama would define as a quarterback: shallow, vain, self-centered, rich, self-involved and a narcissus. He hates Tommy the second the biker boy casts eyes on his girl. He spreads vicious rumors about the new guy, and even gets him expelled just because he can. You're supposed to hate him because he's the bad guy, and you do. But it's one of those shallow hates that leaves you wondering WHY the kid is so hateful and screwy. There's no psychology behind it except that "Jess is MY girl".

7. The Danny Zuko Jess is obsessed with the Fifties. And Grease. She listens to the soundtrack over and over, owns a Pink Ladies jacket and actually jams to Elvis on her way to school. It just so happens new biker boy Tommy looks exactly like Danny from Grease, so she of course can't help but ogle him. Seriously, if the book said "just like Grease" one more time, I would have barfed. It was over-the-top ridiculous. I know most girls love Grease, but I don't know very many modern girls that jam to Elvis Presley on their daily commute.

8. The parents Her parents. OMG. Her mother is a brain-dead baking queen that even told her daughter she'd been in love with someone else but married Jess' father instead. A good mother would never impart her troubles on her daughter. Her father is a royal douche in his own right. He hates Tommy on sight just because he "looks" bad. So every time Tommy shows his face, her father loses his mind like a Neanderthal. Dad is never home, and mom really doesn't care too much about what happens in the house. Your typical YA parents.

And this list doesn't even begin to touch the long list of problems with the writing. There were missing words, missing commas, and the dialogue was so stilted and forced it felt like sometimes the characters were reciting their words off a piece of paper rather than speaking like a bunch of normal people.

The revelation at the end that

[spoiler]Tommy is a time traveler was so obvious that it could have smacked the dumbest reader in the face in chapter 3. Jess always said he "looked like he was from another time". Not to mention his lack of knowing about modern things. And his bike that's from the 50's. And his greased-back hair. Like, geez, people. And Jess doesn't even really blink when he says his big secret. She just accepts it and goes about her lovesick way. [/spoiler]

The ending was dumb. The whole book was rushed and shallow. There was no depth to any of the characters. They were all cookie-cutter. All what you EXPECT to see in high school. This book was like someone cut The Time Traveler's Wife met Grease....badly.

While this wasn't as much a letdown as Mockingjay this was pretty dull. It was more of a medical mystery than an ending to a trilogy. It just seemed like pages and pages of filler. But with that said, I still enjoyed it to some extent. Just not as much as the first two books.

I gave up at 45%. Why? Well, it might have something to do with the crappy story. Or the poor writing. I decided to stop torturing myself when the main girl's father died and she decided to go to a concert. Like, your DAD JUST DIED! Nope, done. The story was immature and shallow. There was no depth to any of the characters. They were all very transparent. The bad guy was clearly the bad guy, from the get go. The snobby girls hate everyone for no reason, because every teen book needs a stereotypical snob click right? There's the cute stranger who comes to the aid of the cute but shy main girl, again, for no reason. How he even knew who she was was left unanswered. So I just stopped.

I have much better things to do with my time.