Falling For YA

When I started Life After Theft I thought it was going to be a light beachy sort of read. It was not what I expected and upon finishing something felt off to me. I later found out Life After Theft was meant to be a modern retelling of The Scarlet Pimpernel, a story I’ve never read, and that may be one of the reasons I didn’t enjoy this more.

Jeff moves from Phoenix to a new school in California, on his first day he sees the ghost of Kimberlee, the girl who used to rule the school and was universally regarded as a “bitch”. He is the first person who has been able to see her and after some coaxing Kimberlee cons Jeff in to helping her with some unfinished business so that she can move on.

I wanted so badly to like Jeff, mainly because I really like male POV in YA novels but his voice never felt natural. Jeff also never truly came off at male, At times Jeff’s and Kimberlee’s voices could have been interchangeable. I did like that throughout the novel Jeff was an overall good sort of guy even when Kimberlee and everyone else were making things truly hard for him to do the right thing.

That brings us to Kimberlee, she was a terrible person in life and a terrible person in the afterlife. At the least she was consistent even if I couldn’t stand the girl. I kept waiting for her to change but she stays the same bitchy secretive person right until the last few pages of the novel. Her conniving and unreasonable actions irked me.

Overall, this story was just all right. I didn’t hate it but I didn’t really enjoy it either. I think if I had been better able to connect to the characters and they had gone through more of a transformation then I would have really enjoyed it but unfortunately these things never happen.