Review: Wink Poppy Midnight - April Genevieve Tucholke

Synopsis

"Every story needs a hero.
Every story needs a villain.
Every story needs a secret.
Wink is the odd, mysterious neighbor girl, wild red hair and freckles. Poppy is the blond bully and the beautiful, manipulative high school queen bee. Midnight is the sweet, uncertain boy caught between them. Wink. Poppy. Midnight. Two girls. One boy. Three voices that burst onto the page in short, sharp, bewitching chapters, and spiral swiftly and inexorably toward something terrible or tricky or tremendous.
What really happened?
Someone knows.
Someone is lying." (Goodreads)

Cover Love

This cover, you guys. It is worth noting how beautiful this cover is, considering it might be one of the best that have been released this year. I received this book (along with two others) from my boyfriend for my birthday and he admitted to letting the covers sort of do the talking for him (he did have a list to go off of, though!). I was talking about it with a friend of mine and she pointed out that a new detail tends to pop out every time you look at it. It's the perfect cover for this story, which has a "blink and you might miss it" vibe.

The Story

I didn't really know much about this book going in, but the description doesn't really give you much to work with. Reviews are really mixed for this one, but a lot of people kept comparing it to We Were Liars, a beautiful YA mystery that I really enjoyed, so I went for it. The title, Wink Poppy Midnight, is named as such because those are the three main characters of the book. I don't know if that helps to give you some perspective of what the story might be like, but those are some weird names and they just are supposed to make sense in this world (other names include Bee Lee, Alabama, Leaf and...Thomas?).

I definitely don't want to give the plot away because the mysteriousness is seemingly meant to be a part of the marketing. If you need a little extra info to see if this might be your story, here's a bit more about it without getting into too much detail: Midnight has been in love with girl-next-door Poppy since they were little, and she is a bully who uses him for sex and personal ego boosts. Midnight is just about over Poppy's crap when he and his father move a couple of miles away, next to Wink's family's barn. He meets Wink and there is an attraction there, a new girl-next-door to fall for. Poppy isn't used to being rejected, so she doesn't necessarily take it well. That's about all I can say, but that doesn't really scratch the surface of this novel.

WPM's Downfall

For me, a great reading experience comes from getting to know and truly care for the characters. Give me a reason to continue. Give me a reason to be concerned as to what happens to these people, whether they are heroes or villains or liars. 

Tucholke's writing is pretty, but it doesn't say much. We are meant to care about these people and what happens to them but there isn't enough there to bring us to that point. Because of this, the lovely prose comes off as fluff that pillows the story. The worst part is, this book is less than 250 pages long and probably would've been much more enjoyable if there was more to it than just word-repetition and vague hints at the characters' past and present lives.

Overall

2 Stars

I think this book had potential and it failed to live up to that for me. It is a quick read, but I mostly kept turning the pages to figure out why I needed to care about these people. I could see why some readers would enjoy this book, but the way it was written just isn't for me.