Kill Me Softly by Sarah Cross features insta-love, a wide-eyed, special snowflake girl, and a bad-guy love triangle with two men who are way too old for a 15 year old. I’m not a fan and do not recommend this book for any school library.
SERIES: Beau Rivage, book 1
PUBLISHER: EgmontUSA
PUBLICATION DATE: April 10, 2012
ISBN: 9781606843239
PAGES: 336
SOURCE: purchased
GENRE: Fairytale retelling
SETTING: present, casino/beach town called Beau Rivage
GIVE IT TO: HS
SUMMARY OF KILL ME SOFTLY
Just before her 16th birthday, Mira runs away from her two godmothers who raised her in search of her parents’ gravestones and her own mysterious past.
When she gets to Beau Rivage, the town where she was born, Mira finds things are not at all like they seem. Two brothers are at odds concerning Mira – one pushes her to leave as soon as possible, the other drawing her close to convince her to stay.
REVIEW OF KILL ME SOFTLY
Kill Me Softly? More like Kill Me NOW. 73 pages in, and I am done.
We’ll start with Mira. What a brat! For no real reason at all, she lies and runs away from two caring godmothers who raised her from infancy to find some tombstones in a faraway town she’s never been to?
Then, when she gets there, it suddenly dawns on her that she can’t make a hotel reservation because she is only fifteen? She had planned to run away for eight months before she actually did it; did a hotel reservation never occur to her? And those tombstones she was looking for? Nope, she never Googled her parents’ names to see where they might be located; she just thought she’d walk around a strange city to see if she could find them. FAIL.
So Mira gets to Beau Rivage and hangs out in an all-night casino/restaurant so she won’t have to walk the streets alone and hungry. So it’s perfectly logical that a 21-year old man-boy “rescues” her by offering to put her up in his daddy’s expensive hotel and pays for everything, even though he does not know her from Adam.
And our Mary Sue – I mean Mira – thinks this is a good idea? It never, ever occurs to her that this man-boy might want something more from the lovely and incredibly naive Mira. Not even when he tells her to stay out of his Red Room of Pain, or else. Of course his motives are genuine–just look how hawt he is, y’all!
But my frustrations do not end there. Nope, sorry. A few hours after she checks into the hotel, another boy sneaks into her hotel room in the predawn hours and LIES DOWN on top of her. But instead of calling the police or at least screaming bloody murder (or hey, how about returning home?), she gets all huffy with the offending boy and allows him to usher her outside and into the nearest taxi to take her to yet another stranger’s house.
Now here’s where it really gets annoying (because I have hung in there until now). At this apparently posh mansion, there are a bunch of unsupervised, trash-talking teens hanging out, making constant raunchy sexual innuendo and looking and talking like they are straight off the pages of GQ. And after Mira huffs and stomps off (again), she still isn’t running for the hills?
So I’m already done with Mira. She has no backbone and chooses over and over to have things “done” to her rather than take control of the situation she created. Poor little passive Mira. Good thing she has a 21-year old rich love machine who she lurrrvveess after 18.2 seconds to take care of her.
THE BOTTOM LINE
Skip it. There are so many fairytale retellings out there today – close your eyes and choose any one of them. No matter what you choose, it’s bound to be better than this.
STATUS IN MY LIBRARY
Sad to say that we have it, and that beautiful cover makes it somewhat popular.
READALIKES
- Beastkeeper (Hellison)
- The Darkest Part of the Forest (Black)
- Strands of Bronze and Gold (Nickerson)
RATING BREAKDOWN
- Overall: 1/5
- Creativity: 1/5–it had potential but failed miserably
- Characters: 0/5–I can’t take any more Mira
- Engrossing: 1/5–no
- Writing: 2/5
- Appeal to teens: 4/5–fairytale retellings are all the rage right now, plus the cover is really pretty
- Appropriate length to tell the story: I don’t know–I couldn’t get past page 73
MATURE CONTENT
- Language: high–and for no real reason except for the sake of cursing–these are some seriously foul-mouthed teens
- Sexuality: medium-high–the protag is 15, and her insta-love interest is described as 20 or 21. And she sleeps in his room and he reaches 2nd base with her. Ew.
- Violence: only got to page 75, but no violence up to then
- Drugs/Alcohol: teens drink and smoke cigarettes