On Starships and Dragonwings

I received Crash by Lisa McMann from Simon & Schuster Audio for review and was excited for a new spin on the paranormal YA book. Crash definitely delivers! I actually had to figure out how to hook up my iPhone to my car speakers (through my cassette player) and ended up borrowing an old converter that my friend had, but it was totally worth it ;-). I also ended up listening to most of Crash while driving in white-out conditions or horrible snowy roads, so maybe that was tempting fate a bit, but I was fine :D. Crash is a great combination of family shenanigans, weird paranormal stuff, and oh high school sighing, and this is coming from someone who doesn’t generally like too much of the swoony romance stuff, haha.
 Goodreads | Amazon
Title: Crash
Author: Lisa McMann
Time: 5 hours, 18 minutes
Genre-ish: YA Paranormal
Rating: ★★★★☆- interesting premise, minor annoyances

If what you see is what you get, Jules is in serious trouble. The suspenseful first in a series from the New York Timesbestselling author of the Wake trilogy.Jules lives with her family above their restaurant, which means she smells like pizza most of the time and drives their double-meatball-shaped food truck to school. It’s not a recipe for popularity, but she can handle that.

What she can’t handle is the recurring vision that haunts her. Over and over, Jules sees a careening truck hit a building and explode…and nine body bags in the snow.

The vision is everywhere—on billboards, television screens, windows—and she’s the only one who sees it. And the more she sees it, the more shesees. The vision is giving her clues, and soon Jules knows what she has to do. Because now she can see the face in one of the body bags, and it’s someone she knows. Someone she has been in love with for as long as she can remember. – Goodreads

Strengths:

•  The premise of Crash is really interesting. I haven’t read any premonitions books lately, so it certainly seemed fresh to me. Jules just keeps seeing the same vision over and over and it is steadily taking over her life. Crash has just the right amount of paranormal to add spice, but not so much that you started to wonder who was sending these visions (at least not yet!).
• Jules develops well as a character, and Crash is definitely a coming of age story as well as a mystery/romance/paranormal. Apparently solving a mystery and saving lives really makes a girl grow up fast, who knew?
• Sawyer is adorable and a great love interest. I’m rather tired of jerks/stalkers as love interests, so it was nice to finally have a genuinely nice guy!
• Love Trey!!!! I’m happy with McMann for having a gay brother and not shying away from that character, but also not making him too over the top. As someone who has gay friends all across the flamboyance spectrum, I was quite comfortable with the way Trey was portrayed and the fact that being gay was not all that he was. He was also a good brother, son, and sometimes student ;-).

Weaknesses:

• “Oh my dogs” might be my new least favorite expression. I don’t care that it adds uniqueness or that real teenagers might say it, it’s bloody annoying to hear over and over in an audiobook. Please never use “dog” in place of “God” again.
• The narration was a bit awkward at times, especially in the shower scene.. >.> <.<
• I won’t go into much detail the ending revelation and romantic developments seemed rushed to me, maybe it was because I thought the crash was the ending and it would be just a brief wrap up after that, but then there was more?

Summary:

Overall, I really liked Crash and am looking forward to the next book, especially after what we found out at the very end! I haven’t been reading a lot of similar books, but the idea seemed fresh and I thought the plot was well developed. However, Crash has been a very polarizing book, and many people haven’t liked the characters and plot development, so I recommend checking out some of the links for both if you aren’t sure. I also would probably recommend against the audiobook if the expression “Oh my dogs” sounds annoying to you, because it’s probably easier to ignore in text….