The Comeback Season by Jennifer E. Smith

The last place Ryan Walsh should be this afternoon is on a train heading to Wrigley Field. She should be in class, enduring yet another miserable day of her first year of high school. But for once, Ryan isn't thinking about what she should be doing. She's not worried about her lack of friends, or her suffering math grade, or how it's been five whole years since the last time she was really and truly happy. Because she's finally returning to the place that her father loved, where the two of them spent so many afternoons cheering on their team. And on this -- the fifth anniversary of his death -- it feels like there's nowhere else in the world she should be.

Ryan is once again filled with hope as she makes her way to the game. Good luck is often hard to come by at a place like Wrigley Field, but it's on this day that she meets Nick, the new kid from her school, who seems to love the Cubs nearly as much as she does. But Nick carries with him a secret that makes Ryan wonder if anyone can ever really escape their past, or believe in the promise of those reassuring words: "Wait till next year." Is it too much for Ryan to hope that this year, this season, might be her comeback season?


My Thoughts/Review:

Apparently, it wasn't enough for this book to be mediocre until about halfway through, so they decided to make the ending a killer. Yes, this ending answers none of the questions that I have. It makes them worse. I know that the ending of this book will probably eat away at the very existence of my life, until I'm ready to go all psycho on it.

Guess what? The characters were mediocre, the story was mediocre (not to mention predictable), and overall, I'm not even sure why I even bothered to finish it. Because I really wasn't all that into it! I am scowling right now people! Scowling! I'm almost never scowl about books. (Movies yes, books no.)

So, let's move on to my character analysis. Ryan sucked. Straight up. She kept changing her mind about Nick, she was cliched, she skipped over importantish parts in her history, and overall, she just rubbed me the wrong way. Her step-dad has never done anything to her, and she basically treats him like dirt. She doesn't want to take him to a ball game, because she thinks he'll try and talk about golf (he does), but mostly, the annoying part was that she never really gave him a chance. She just assumed. She's basically a self-absorbed brat, that the author tried to make human--but failed miserably. (Also, why does she keep referring to herself in third-person?)

I just can't stand her, and I can go on for days about her failings as a character, but I will stop there. Nick, Nick, Nick. We have another cliched YA character here--popular guy who wants un-popular girl. That's one of the absolute worst cliches an author can write! We don't want to hear about an popular boy/un-popular girl getting together, then the crowd accepting her...no. Just no. Say it with me. "We don't want to hear about it! (just keep swimming, just keep swimming)" I mean, can it get worse than that? At least it wasn't a love triangle. I don't think I could've taken that.

Also, I often found myself trying to figure out how I got from one point to another. It seemed like the author just skipped from one point to another...it was awful. Let this be known though: I have no problem with this author. I quite liked The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight. But this one was different. Not near as good.

Ooh, I really need to stop now. Sorry guys, I just really, really need to calm down.


Favorite Quote: But Ryan knows differently. There aren't just two kinds of endings. It's not as simple as winning or losing. There's a space in between, and this is where most of us tend to live.
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