Book Review: Envy

TITLE: Envy
Book 1 in the Empty Coffin series
AUTHOR: Gregg Olsen
PUBLISHED: 2011
CATEGORY: YA
GENRE: horror, mystery/thriller
PREMISE: Teen girls look into the apparent accidental death of their neighbor.
MY REVIEW: Well, I give Olsen several points for the concept of the book because that is mildly interesting. Unfortunately I cannot say that this is a good book. While the idea was intrigueing the excution of said idea made this less then three hundred page book a chore to get through. I mean when you make less then three hundred pages seemingly drag on forever and ever, that says something.
The huge beef I have is I detested ALL of the characters. That's right, ALL OF THEM. Even the twin's parents who I mildly tolerated where kind of hypocritical and obviously self inserts of the author himself. I mean the father even wrote true crime like the author! Then the father has the nerve to judge the reporter girl looking for a story when, I'm sorry true crime books do the same damn thing the reporter does so look at yourself before you judge her about exploitation. Especially as this whole book basically exploits the Megan Meier case for its plot so I'm sorry but no, author you don't get to be the morality judge here.
As for the twins, oh my god they made me bang my head agsinst the wall, they were so shallow. I mean they weren't even friends with the girl who died, it's like they're using their gift just to get rid of their slightly guilty conscious. Oh and it's not just the reporter that gets the judgement parade by the way. No, you can practically hear the judgement of todays teens through the narration. Spare me. Then there's the simple thing that the ending of the case was rather lame, it was dull as rocks, and the writing was HORRIBLE. Look, I get the author is a true fiction crime writer but guess what, that kind of writing really doesn't work for YA or for fiction.
As far as I'm concerned this book missed the mark when it came to the enjoyment factor which is a thing that is kind of needed in fiction. I say don't bother with this unless you're really interested in which case just check it out of the library so you don't waste your money. I give it one extra star due to the awesome cover.
WHO SHOULD READ: er...mystery fans but even some of them may not enjoy this.
MY RATING: Two out of Five bathtubs