The Female of the Species by Mindy McGinnis

25812109.jpgHow to sum up a book like The Female of the Species… hmmm… Well…

“That was creepy as **** but I really enjoyed it anyway?”

Yup, that’ll have to do.

Just kidding – I will give more of a detailed review. But seriously, this is one hella-weird premise, and the book is certainly not for the faint of heart. I mean, Alex is messed up. Which is weird, because I don’t generally love intensely screwed up characters who do awful things, but I did actually really like Alex as a person. I wanted good things for her. Yeah, she is intent on stalking and murdering someone, but I mean it’s not like he didn’t brutally molest and murder her sister. Not that I’m saying he deserved it, but… well…

Gah. See that? Even though I am anti-murder (even revenge murder) in my contemporary (for some reason I’m way more okay with it in fantasy reads, idk what that says about me), I wanted to justify everything to make exceptions for Alex. Because really, she is a cool girl who saves puppies and stands up for girls who are being coerced into sex at parties against their will, and she’s just generally really awesome (albeit intense). But she is very – I repeat, VERY – morally in the middle of things. Like, we’re talking as gray as they come.

Then there’s Peekay, Alex’s quasi-best-maybe-only friend and Jack, the love-interest. I really really felt for both of them. There is so much awesome character development happening here, and even though they all make mistakes and are human you just can’t help but love them for who they are and who they are trying to become throughout the book.

The ending I cannot even talk about. I’m sorry, but there are way too many complicated feels going on even as I just sit here THINKING about talking about it. So, nope. Not going to do that. But if you get to the ending you’ll know exactly what I’m going through and you are welcome to contact me so we can talk about it and maybe weep openly in public for a little while?

This was almost a four-star read for me, but even though I didn’t rate it that highly, that doesn’t mean I don’t think you should read it. It’s super interesting and completely different from anything on the market right now. Plus, I don’t even like thrillers and I enjoyed it (it was seriously hard to put down). If there had been more ending-closure it would have been higher, but even still, I can’t believe how much I liked this.

Rating: 3.6/5 stars 

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