Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Book Review- Mad Love

I finished reading Mad Love by Suzanne Selfors last.

From Goodreads:

When you're the daughter of the bestselling Queen of Romance, life should be pretty good. But 16-year-old Alice Amorous has been living a lie ever since her mother was secretly hospitalized for mental illness. After putting on a brave front for months, time is running out. The next book is overdue, and the Queen can't write it. Alice needs a story for her mother—and she needs one fast.


That's when she meets Errol, a strange boy who claims to be Cupid, who insists that Alice write about the greatest love story in history: his tragic relationship with Psyche. As Alice begins to hear Errol's voice in her head and see things she can't explain, she must face the truth—that she's either inherited her mother's madness, or Errol is for real.

This was a pretty okay book.  It wasn't super great, but it wasn't horrible either.  I think it did have a very important underlying theme though.  And it's in an interesting category:  YA Contemporary with a little bit of mythology thrown in.

As for the characters, I liked them but I didn't really connect with them.  They seemed a little distant.  I felt so bad for Alice.  Trying to be the parent while keeping her mother's secret from the rest of the world.  And Errol was off and on for me (although I think he was supposed to be).  At times I felt so bad for him and why he was running out of time to tell his story, and other times I wanted to tell him to chill and that Alice had her own problems to deal with.  But I really liked Tony.  He was such a sweet character!

The underlying theme was dealing with a family member with a mental illness.  I think it was such a strong message that Alice got when she finally realized that she had to be true to herself and that she shouldn't be ashamed of her mother's disease.

I gave this book a rating of 3.5/5.

This book fulfills items in the following challenges:
2011 100+ Reading Challenge: 12
2011 Young Adult Reading Challenge: 10
2011 YA Contemporary Challenge: 1

*FTC Disclosure: This book was given to me for free by Bloomsbury USA for a honest review.

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