Review: The Infinite Moment of Us - Lauren Myracle

The Infinite Moment of Us
Lauren Myracle
Genre: Young Adult, Romance
Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
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I read this book as a TBR Jar challenge (I'm just not having luck with those, clearly) -- read a book solely judging by its cover. I didn't just select the book for the challenge based on the cover, but the cover is what attracted me to make the purchase in the first place. I bought this so long ago I honestly don't remember when or where I obtained it, but I recall seeing the pretty script and the colors and thinking I wanted it and the blurb seemed promising so I finally gave it a go.

Now I wish I'd just left it on my shelf and admired the pretty cover and not read the book. I feel like the best phrase to describe my opinions on this book is to say that I wasn't feeling it. I think that encompasses the way I feel like I couldn't form real connections and couldn't bring myself to care and was just reading for the sake of reading. I just wasn't feeling what this book was putting out, which wasn't much. And this is coming from someone who absolutely loves cheesy, cutesy romances and fluff and things of that sort so I'm not hating on that aspect or anything because of a personal negative genre bias.

My first grievance will be the characters, I guess, so there's a background, since the book was all about these two and their destined love. Wren is our main protagonist, and we meet her as she's graduating high school. So she's super smart and pretty and kind and probably perfect. And then we have Charlie, her counterpart, who is all quiet and closed off and doesn't really have friends and has a tragic backstory of course. And there's nothing wrong with writing characters who fit the descriptions of these characters -- I know I didn't go too in-depth, but you get the idea -- if you do it well and give them their own personalities and good dialogue and make them come to life but I literally felt like I was reading stock characters. They weren't well done at all.

And the dialogue really bothered me too. I know the opinions of characters are not the opinions of authors, but some of the things the characters said were just really questionable and propagated a lot of antifeminist ideas and I usually don't have a problem with problematic characters existing because that's how you have a dynamic cast of characters but in those cases it's easy to see that you shouldn't align your views with them, whereas here you were supposed to laugh and agree. I wish I could pull up some of the quotes here but I just moved back in from college and my books are packed away in a box, including this one.

Other than that, it honestly just wasn't well written. The beginning was okay and I thought it would pick up but it just didn't. The writing wasn't anything great and the plot was just annoying. Wren was selfish and annoying and made such illogical choices for someone who was supposedly so intelligent. Charlie obsessed with her in a weird way. She wanted him to drop everything for her and go travel with her and also there was some girl named Starrla thrown in there for conflict purposes but the entire book just focused on their romance, which honestly wasn't that great for being marketed as written in the stars or whatever. Like, I wouldn't mind an entire book spending all its pages on a romance. In fact, I'd be into it. I just need it to be something worth reading. Myracle decided to forgo so many possible areas where the could have explored the story -- Wren's relationship with her parents, Wren and why she needed to take a year off from school to travel, Charlie and his family, Charlie's brother. She briefly mentioned so many things and didn't provide enough elaboration to be satisfied and the book would have been so much better if she spent time fleshing out those aspects of their lives and still keeping the romance as a main plot point -- although the romance needs to be revamped very much too, but one step at a time, right?

- Noor

Have you encountered any terrible romances?
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