Review: 99 Days by Katie Cotugno

99 Days by Katie Cotugno


Synopsis:
Day 1: Julia Donnelly eggs my house my first night back in Star Lake, and that’s how I know everyone still remembers everything—how I destroyed my relationship with Patrick the night everything happened with his brother, Gabe. How I wrecked their whole family. Now I’m serving out my summer like a jail sentence: Just ninety-nine days till I can leave for college, and be done.

Day 4: A nasty note on my windshield makes it clear Julia isn’t finished. I’m expecting a fight when someone taps me on the shoulder, but it’s just Gabe, home from college and actually happy to see me. “For what it’s worth, Molly Barlow,” he says, “I’m really glad you’re back.”

Day 12: Gabe got me to come to this party, and I’m actually having fun. I think he’s about to kiss me—and that’s when I see Patrick. My Patrick, who’s supposed to be clear across the country. My Patrick, who’s never going to forgive me.
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I highly recommend this book if

a) You are into brother-brother love triangles

b) You enjoy characters that never, ever, ever learn from mistakes and repeat them over and over again without remorse.

I DNF’d this book at around 50% because I just couldn’t take it anymore. 99 Days is about a girl named Molly, who slept with her ex-boyfriend Patrick’s brother Gabe very shortly after they broke up (within a day of their breaking up if I remember correctly) and she tells her mother about it, who then goes on to publish a book about it, humiliating Molly and making everyone hate her. So then she moves on to go to boarding school for senior year, without telling her friends or anything. The book starts off when Molly returns, only to find that everyone in the town hates her, even her best friend (no surprise!) and the only exception to this is Gabe, her ex-boyfriend's brother. 

Gabe is the only one that doesn't hate her, and as we find out later in the book, has had a crush on her for the longest time! And let's not forget he's the one that slept with Molly very shortly after she broke up with his brother. But I'll leave that for now and move on. 

Let’s talk about Molly. She is by far, the most stupendously irritating character I’ve ever read about and if I ever met her in real life, the first thing I’d do is give her 3 tight slaps across the face. Despite the fact that I had a lot of sympathy for her during the first half of the book and even empathised with her, come the second half and I came so close to wanting to reach in and give her a good shake! So she comes back to town to find that everyone hates her, and in the beginning I feel sympathy for her, I really do. But as the story goes on, I found myself wanting to slam my head against the wall repeatedly and slap her as hard as I could? Why the sudden change? Let me explain it. 

So she cheated on Patrick, the boy she has known since forever. It's not something small, but it happens. And when something like this happens, the norm tends to be you apologize, feel remorse, learn from the mistake to improve yourself. But this doesn't happen at all in the book! Molly acknowledges she cheated on Patrick, she takes the consequences yet not once do we see that she feels remorse!  But then I told myself, it's okay, just look past it. 

And I did until I came to the next part that made me put down the book. After getting together with Gabe and having the perfect boyfriend (Loving, caring, with absolute adoration) she goes and freaking cheats on Gabe with Patrick! I mean, are you kidding me? Do you never learn from your mistakes woman? The main character is selfish, self-centred and utterly weak and helpless! 

This book turned out to be very dissapointing, which is sad because it could have been a really good book had it not been for the repeated cheating! I know that cheating is part of the book, but you can only go so far before it gets irritating. I'd give this book a 2.5 stars out of 5.