SWAB

by Heather Choate

I want to start by saying that this book is not bad (I have read much worse), and the writing is good. I do however have serious issues with so many things in this book that I just couldn’t give it more than two stars on Goodreads, and the only reason it went from one to two stars was because I kind of liked the writing.

The main plot is OK and it’s a very different thing than anything I have ever read before, so kudos to the writer for that.
But I had to really work to read this book from beginning to end. The first half went on pretty smoothly, but then second half never seemed to stop, the book just went on forever. The book should have ended about 4-5 chapters sooner in my opinion, that would have made more sense and been a much better opening for the sequel.
And I am so sorry, because I wanted to like this book. I really wanted to.

Want to know what it was that annoyed me? Read below and find out.
—- Spoilers below —-

OK, so we live in a word were human sized insects try to kill us. They take my boyfriend and then when I go to save him, they take me too. Then I am turned into a bug and all my friends get all ugly and s***, but I get a complete makeover and get bigger boobs, fuller lips, blonder hair and…yeah you get the image, I turn into a babe. WHAT?? If she had been all ugly too, I would have maybe even liked her.

And as if that wasn’t all, my friends (the now ugly ones) are like “hell yeah, I am a bug and I can fly. This is awesome.” Hmm…that reaction ain’t working for me, not even if I try.

On top of that, Cat now seems to completely forget about her boyfriend Ray for about the whole book, until suddenly in the last few chapters she’s kind of “oh, by the way, what did you do to my boyfriend. I have to find him (again)”.

Then Cat dies from a massive gap in her stomach (I say hurray, cause she’s kind of annoying), but…Derrick (the boy she’s destined to be with) weeps for her and his tears brings her back to life. Which is just sooo Disney (like prince in Snow White) that I almost wanted to throw up.

But, what bugs (pun not intended) me the most about this book though are all the contradictions that can be found within it. I mean the whole thing starts with one since the first scene describes a scarb with green skin, then when she sees the scarb that takes away her boyfriend, she claims this is the first green one she’s ever seen? What’s up with that?

Then there’s this whole thing with the body armor of the scarb. They have a body covered in hard plates (they’re insects after all) that makes bullets just ricochet from their bodies. Still Cat can apparently head-butt the air from a scarb’s lung? I would say she has a hell of a strong head to do that.

And water…water is apparently the only way to kill the scarb and they are soo sensitive that they seem to die just by being sprayed with it. Still they hang out around waterfalls, drink water (even straight for the waterfall) and yeah…wouldn’t that kill them?

Lastly, at one point cat says she’s in control of all the fliers. Yay! But then, why does fliers suddenly attack her from everywhere? Did I miss something? Quite possible that I did cause I just didn’t have the desire to read the whole thing word for word. And to be honest, I skipped a lot in the end.

Even if that wasn’t all the things I found annoying about this book, it was all that I felt I had the time to put down. It’s still a lot of text in this review though, and I know that, and if you read the whole thing, you might actually have the patience to read the whole book too.