So I read the back bookflap first and learned that the author graduated from Harvard magna cum laude with an English degree, went to Yale for law school. The Asian in me nodded approvingly and another part of me felt an instant kinship. After all, I graduated summa cum laude with an English degree (among other things) from a pretty good university, although of course not nearly at the prestigious level of Harvard...AND I almost ended up going to Yale for law school. 
 Somewhere in my head, I was thinking: here is proof that you can do all that and still publish a YA novel. Not just any crappy YA novel either - one with a gorgeous cover and a premise that, okay, sounds a lot like Minority Report but hey, it's not like Shakespeare's plays were all that original either, right? Sometimes it's about the execution of the idea more so than pure originality. 
 Look, I got to page 200 before finally admitted to myself that I'd yet to enjoy anything about this book. I dislike the characters, I dislike the first person narration (the narrator sounds 30+, not even slightly close to teenage), I dislike the overall writing style, and I laughed my head off at several cringeworthy descriptions and scenes. 
 Once upon a time, maybe even a year ago, I would have forced myself to finish this book because 1. no book is going to get the best of me and 2. I'm used to pushing through long, mostly incomprehensible, boring texts. A YA novel that I can read in a couple of hours is nothing compared to those. But those days are long past and I've decided that my time is precious. There are so many amazing series to explore and awesome authors to discover. 
 I can definitely go in depth and analyze the heck out of this book, identifying the exact things that turned me off as a reader. I do sometimes do this when I end up reading what I consider to be a truly awful book. This isn't a truly awful book, so there's that. I'll take the lazy way out this time and let other people criticize it for me, as I'm sure I'm not the only one who thought this was, at best, a very mediocre work. 
 Oh wait, there is one thing that did really stand out to me as truly awful. The romance. I often write disparagingly of the instalove that unfortunately appears in many YA novels but rarely have I found such a good example. I can't fathom who on earth actually enjoys the kind of cringey romance on display in this book but I guess some people out there actually do.