There's nothing more satisfying than starting the new year with a review that is not positive. Because yet again I show my honesty, and you read Book Probe for the honest reviews. I mean, what else are you here for than not for the negative to mixed reviews? 
 The Almost Girl seemed like the perfect read to kick 2014 off with (though I did read at end of 2013)--sci-fi, intergalactic world, Strange Chemisty/Angry Robot, great cover. Those are four features I like. And I foolishly believed that that combination was going to be lethal and satisfying and worthy of remembrance. Yet The Almost Girl wasn't. The novel read like a first draft, it fell into tropes, and was completely and utterly boring, devoid of any actual substance, amusement and unconventionality. 
 Riven is from another "world" (and we know that because there continually is, "In my world..." at the beginning of every paragraph. I found that to be a pretty pathetic device of world-building, yet we don't actually learn what world, or rather planet, she came from until further into the book). In her world she is the... let's just say, the creme de la creme, the best of everything. Riven gets commanded by the prince of Neospen, Cale, to retrieve an item--that being Caden--from Earth, a planet (ours, obviously) in another "world" that Caden was deposited and secretly under protection by Guardians, and surprisingly, Riven's sister. As she does Riven discovers a lot about herself, her family, and who Caden really is. 
 As I said previously, The Almost Girl reads like a first draft. There was no real substance to the story, to the world, and the characters. This is mostly in part due to the constant dropping of information as the novel progressed (In my world...), which seemed as though Howard created the world and characters as she was writing (In my world...), as if Howard decided to implement past events or needed information as they popped into her head. This made the novel inconsistent yet monotonous. 
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