Nerve by Jeanne Ryan

Gut Instinct Rating - 3

Characters - 2

Believability for type and topics - 4

Similarity to other books - 3.5

Writing Style - 3

Excitement Factor - 2

Story Line - 3

Title Relevance - 2

Cover art - 5

Goodreads users gave this book a 3.42. I think it was more deserving of a 3.06.

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Published in 2012

Pages: 294

Publishing Company: Speak Publishing

Number of books by author: 2 Novels

Genre: YA Fictions, Thriller, Sci-Fi, Thriller

Referred by: pagingserenity

This book was a huge let down. I mean, Goodreads users didn't seem to like it, so I'm curious as to how it became a "major motion picture." (That's a WHOLE other story, by the way... which I'll touch on later.) Overall, this book was jumpy, flat, and the writing was amateur.

The characters were poorly written. For a book that is all about profiles and behavior, every character had the same description and the same exact information was used repeatedly throughout the book to describe each behavior/pattern (ie: the popular girl only ever was the popular girl); the depth was just missing. Luckily, the profile itself is what made this believable. The slim knowledge of behaviors and mob mentality is what kept my interest in this book. I was disappointed with the pairing at the end, however. That didn't make sense.

The book was fairly unique as far as the story away from the concept of the game (truth or dare). Every one has encountered truth or dare, and despite the book saying there's no "truth" in this book, there really is quite a bit a deal of truth that comes in pairing with the dare aspects. But the ending? It felt so similar to something else I've read, and I can't really place it, but it's not quite unique enough.

The writing style, this is what really killed me. The book was so incredibly boring for one. For a thriller, I'm wanting to rush through this book. I was able to put it down several times. It took me 7 days to read it. Which is a significant amount of time for me. The book was just not what I anticipated, and I think a lot of that is paired with the writing style because it felt juvenile. The characters are set in high school. But, the entire thing lacked detail, it lacked a steady, cohesive story line; it was all very jumpy. It was like reading a high school students' journal, as opposed to a YA thriller novel.

It certainly doesn't help that I went into this book with a different expectation - and that may be the synopsis and feedback given from numerous other reviewers. But, I came in with a set picture and pace in mind, and I got something totally different. What I had in mind, was way more like the movie. (Which I didn't mind, but in comparison to the movie, it was a train wreck.) It was all so poorly executed as far as thrillers go. I would've much rather read this as a sequel in a dystopian setting or something similar to that effect.

The title, I thought was a horrible connotation for this book. This book had nothing to do with "having nerve." It was just a poor title concept. The artwork was fine.

As far as the movie goes - it couldn't have been further apart from the actual book. The basis of the book was a high school stage designer; I felt like the movie was starring a college student. There was no "mother and father" scenario, which I felt was really critical to the story line. Then you have the reason she joined Nerve; the reason Ian was in Nerve; there's all these things. There were characters names that weren't even the same for crying out loud! It was a shit show, to be honest. I mean, I liked the movie better than the book and the book will be sold; but, I wouldn't buy the movie, either. Both were bad. It's a bare miracle they both hit the 3-stars (the movie received 2.9 stars and the book had 2.8 stars without the artwork being factored in).