Review: Did I Mention I Love You - Estelle Maskame

Did I Mention I Love You?
Erin Morgenstern
Series: The DIMILY Trilogy #1
Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary, Romance
Publisher: Black & White Publishing
Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
Goodreads

I honestly picked this up thinking it'd be a kind of trashy, fun, pick me up kind of romance. I was so pleasantly surprised when I didn't hate it as much as previously expected?

So Eden Munro, our main character, is, like in many YA novels, visiting her dad for the summer in a different state (it's all very Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants). What isn't very Sisterhood though, is that she meets Tyler, her stepbrother. As you might be able to tell just from these opening sentences, some ~stuff~ happens with her and her step brother. If you're not about stuff like that, I highly suggest avoiding this book right off the bat. So basically Eden is expecting a bitchy stepmom and three little kid siblings, while instead theyre all like 11+ and Tyler is a year older than her. The other two siblings are literally mentioned like 3 times in the book so they're not too important. Eden uses her family insecurities to go to parties at all hours of the night with Tyler and his friends.

So Eden makes friends with this crew and is surprised to find out that Tyler is in it. Everybody in the group seems cool but honestly the fact they all had like one major character point was a downer, they all seemed interesting and I'd have loved to know more of their backstories. Tyler is exactly like you imagine though, think of an angsty teen boy who does all the illegal things and talks back to his mom and is generally just a prick. Yeah? You got him? That's who Eden falls for, the forbidden fruit or whatever.

Honestly, I thought Eden and Tyler weren't really sketched out enough for main characters at all. Every character seems to stick to a trope in this book and that honestly was the most disappointing thing, especially because the writing wasn't half bad and I know with character improvements the quality of the next books will go way way up. What I mean by these tropes are: stepmom is overly sensitive, dad is overly protective, Tyler is overly angsty, side character is overly a petty bitch, Eden is overly rebellious teenage girl. They all have one mention of a redeeming thing from these tropes, where they defy what is stereotypically expected of them. In my opinion that's a step in the right direction, but not exactly straying from static. I'd like to see them more developed in the next books!

The cool thing about this book though is that the plot doesn't go where you would necessarily expect it to, and there are going to be two other books in this series and I'm going to read them, because the second half of this book was a lot better than the first. I honestly got a JLA vibe from this, and I'm honestly hoping it'll go uphill just like that JLA series I've been reviewing does. Not a huge fan of this book but I have high hopes for the author, because the writing was interesting enough to make me finish the book in one sitting, it was really just the characters that need work!

- Amrutha

What's your opinion on step-sibling relationships?
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