Mother Daughter Book Club Review // Instant Karma

Chronic overachiever Prudence Barnett is always quick to cast judgment on the lazy, rude, and arrogant residents of her coastal town. Her dreams of karmic justice are fulfilled when, after a night out with her friends, she wakes up with the sudden ability to cast instant karma on those around her.

Pru giddily makes use of the power, punishing everyone from public vandals to mean gossips, but there is one person on whom her powers consistently backfire: Quint Erickson, her slacker of a lab partner. Quint is annoyingly cute and impressively noble, especially when it comes to his work with the rescue center for local sea animals.

When Pru resigns herself to working at the rescue center for extra credit, she begins to uncover truths about baby otters, environmental upheaval, and romantic crossed signals―not necessarily in that order. Her newfound karmic insights reveal how thin the line is between virtue and vanity, generosity and greed . . . love and hate… and fate.

It was my turn to pick the mother daughter book club book. I chose Instant Karma after a month of a reading slump and not wanting to get into my original pick - a complicated mystery. I absolutely love summer and I live in Florida. I can't wait to go back to the beach so I thought this light-hearted contemporary set during Summer would be the perfect fit.

Marissa Meyer has never written a contemporary and it showed.

I love the concept of Instant Karma. I am always for huge character growth in the stories I read. I don't mind if initially the main character is unlikable if I see a change in them. And granted, Pru did change. She's a very type A personality, controlling, and set in her ways. I get that but... I just could not like her. She was so obviously in the wrong in the majority of the book that she kind of drove me nuts. Her love interest Quint was pretty okay. I don't think I saw as much of him and what makes him him as a person. We get to meet his family, talk about his passion, and learn some sad backstory but I don't know... I still didn't feel like I really got to know him. I think it didn't help that Pru and Quint together didn't make sense. I felt like the romance was pushed on the characters instead of the reader slowly seeing them become better together and perfect for each other. I will say that I had high hopes after Pru and Quint went on this snorkeling excursion. It had to be my favorite scene since it was the type of scene I wanted and expected based on the storyline. I also loved the moments with the sea animals but why so few? There should have been more of an emphasis with Pru and Quint hanging out with the sea lions not just one or two days and that's it. At one point it felt like again, things felt forced but in the way where Pru seemed like such a big advocate for sea animals. She completely changed the rescue center for the better by the end of the story like she was their savior and it felt unrealistic and so convenient that it left me with an unsatisfied feeling. To top it all off I think the other major thing that didn't sit well with me was the pacing. We were going from one thing to the next too rapidly and with a lot of open-endedness. I wish this was more to my liking. Instant Karma had potential but it isn't the light hearted Summer read that I was hoping for. 

What are some Summer reads you'd recommend?