There are a lot of things about books that just really bug me. The first is when you have characters that don’t undergo changes throughout the story. Second is when the plot is too scattered and/or boring. Third is when stories begin with: Hi! My name is INSERT NAME, AGE, and LOCATION. (If I wanted to read something like this, I might as well read someone’s profile or a name-sticker that’s start like that.) Fourth is when the character comes right out and tells you the message of the book and/or what they learned. There’s plenty more, but at the present moment, I’m too lazy to report it.

Bittersweet Sixteen makes two of those mistakes: number three and four. Let me start with the name. Jumping into a story by directly saying the name of the main character (when written in first person) is just so unimaginative. There are hundreds of ways to introduce your character, and HI, MY NAME IS LAURA, is something that makes me roll my eyes and sigh in frustration. Come on, authors! You can do better than that! Anyone can!

On to number four. This book ended with the main character Laura talking about how she had changed. In fact, the exact words are “I had changed over the last two months. I had grown stronger and become my own person” (Karasyov 230). It just makes me really frustrated. I mean, if it was a good book and the plot was apparent, then I would know right away what kind of changes occurred. You don’t need to tell me that directly. As a reader, I’m supposed to infer and conclude! Goodness. But . . . I can see what the authors were trying to do. Except, once again, be creative. Or, if that doesn’t work, do the whole message thing towards the end, not at the LAST page. Even fables exceed this expectation, and it makes me wonder how their agent and the editors could’ve skipped these enormous mistakes.

I have to talk about Laura’s voice. A few words on that: put it into diary format. Seriously. Laura is a decent character and she has a very distinguished voice but the way her voice is written annoyed me. She didn’t seem real enough. If it was in diary-entries format, I would’ve liked her friend’s conversation better and it would have made better sense. Even though I knew the authors had good language and grammar, the way they wrote it didn’t seem to support that point. It just made them sound childish and too unrealistic.

The only good thing I have to say about the book is the subject: sweet sixteen parties. It’s not original and a lot of authors had tried the concept but it was interesting at least. I stuck with it simply because I thought the book couldn’t get any worse, but I was wrong about that too. Another waste.