Title: CrashSeries: Visions #1
Author: Lisa McMann
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Release Date: January 8th 2013
Pages: Hardcover, 233 pages
Source: Audiobook from the Library
Summary from Goodreads:
If what you see is what you get, Jules is in serious trouble. The suspenseful first of four books from the New York Times bestselling author of the Wake trilogy.
Jules lives with her family above their restaurant, which means she smells like pizza most of the time and drives their double-meatball-shaped food truck to school. It’s not a recipe for popularity, but she can handle that.
What she can’t handle is the recurring vision that haunts her. Over and over, Jules sees a careening truck hit a building and explode...and nine body bags in the snow.
The vision is everywhere—on billboards, television screens, windows—and she’s the only one who sees it. And the more she sees it, the more she sees. The vision is giving her clues, and soon Jules knows what she has to do. Because now she can see the face in one of the body bags, and it’s someone she knows. Someone she has been in love with for as long as she can remember.
Jules is a bit of an outcast at school; she comes from a large Italian family that runs their own restaurant and has a huge crush on Sawyer. Sawyer happens to be a member of the rival Italian family that Jules is supposed to hate. Every where she goes, Jules is having visions; she sees a truck driving straight towards a building resulting in a set of body bags. Jules has to piece together the visions she has to try and stop the crash.
The summary for Crash grabbed my attention right away and when I saw that my library had the audio book for it, I jumped on the chance. A girl who has visions of the future and has to save her one true love; sounded great. It was not bad. The story flies by; it was cute but to the point where it got corny. I felt like I was rolling my eyes every couple of chapters. The love story was corny and not genuine. As for characters, the feuding families were funny; they reminded me a bit of My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Jules was an impulse, kind of crazy nerdy girl and Sawyer was a popular kid who just wouldn’t take Jules seriously.
The story line was predictable and I felt like there are a lot of details missing. My one major issue with the story was the visions. There was no explanation about why Jules was getting them. The whole concept needed more development. The audio book narration further enhanced the corny/cute mood of the story.
Crash was a fast read with some funny one-liners. It was a 2.5 star read due to the underdeveloped plot, forced romance, and overall corny-ness.
