Grimlock ♥ Ultra Magnus

Some of the aspects, like the building up of suspense and plot, were truly well done.   I had a hard time coping with the narrator's best friend, though.   It was a good idea to use Shauna as a narrator for a couple reasons.   One being that the plot would have been far different if she'd narrated, and the structure really needed someone close to Jess, but not Jess, to narrate.   Kitty and Anna were less tolerant of Jess, and Shauna was closer to her, so she became the logical choice of narrator.  

Even with Jess as a main character who wasn't the first person in the first person POV, though, she could get overwhelming.   She exhausted me as a reader.  I didn't like her.  I didn't like her so much I kept putting this book down in frustration.   I kept getting annoyed with the other characters for going along with her ideas.   I kept getting annoyed with them for forgiving her.   I was just plain annoyed by Jess.   I didn't quite consider her a character I love to hate, and I do have those.   Cordelia in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, for example.   Love to hate her, at least until she got a little less Mean Girls.  Jess, though?  I just plain hated her.   There was no enjoyment whatsoever, which made this a really rough read given how much she was in it or people talked about her when she wasn't in the book. 

I felt a little sick over how much influence she had over everyone at the end, too.   I can't see myself reading the second of these books for fear of how this author writes these types of characters.   

I simply didn't love anyone else enough to compensate for Jess.   So it was pretty much a wash for me, but more enjoyable than not, so three stars.