Review: Dreaming of Antigone – Robin Bridges

I received this book in exchange for an honest review.

SYNOPSIS: “I can’t ever be the blazing star that Iris was. I’m still just a cold, dark satellite orbiting a star that went super nova.”

Andria’s twin sister, Iris, had adoring friends, a cool boyfriend, a wicked car, and a shelf full of soccer trophies. She had everything, in fact—including a drug problem. Six months after Iris’s death, Andria is trying to keep her grades, her friends, and her family from falling apart. But stargazing and books aren’t enough to ward off her guilt that she—the freak with the scary illness and all-black wardrobe—is still here when Iris isn’t. And then there’s Alex Hammond. The boy Andria blames for Iris’s death. The boy she’s unwittingly started swapping lines of poetry and secrets with, even as she tries to keep hating him. – via Goodreads

I picked this up because it was recommended to me if I like John Green. So I checked it out, expecting something more like his work, and got Dreaming of Antigone, which I would not say is the not quite the same. Definitely a young adult novel, that’s for sure, and had me thinking “teenagers” more often than not due to numerous different incidents. I think the primary one was the falling in love in like, two days, like. I am not saying that in a derogatory sense, just stating that this book distinctly highlights the thinking pattern of kids. That was just a bit crazy. Not because it has never been seen before in a movie/novel, but because of the history shared by Andria and Alex. It’s rough, supposedly, and if that were real life, it would have been super hectic. The book tries to touch on exceptionally heavy themes, like drug addiction, guilt, medical conditions, resentment, dealing with loss, suicide, etc. but just didn’t handle these themes with as much finesse as it hoped to, and it actually quite soft about the issues, if we are being honest. It felt like they had been glossed over, more than anything. The characters are flat and the story is very, very predictable, which is a bit of a disappointment. Andria is not a character that I liked at all, she just seemed too detached from everything that was going on around her, and the whole thing with Alex was just a bit weird because it all went down so fast. As I said, they have some heavy history that seems to just disappear in a heartbeat, or a few lines of poetry. This was the type of relationship that was a bit sketchy to start with, and the rush job did nothing to make it seem more okay. Despite these drawbacks, the novel is a quick read and flows well, but definitely is not the story it could have been. It didn’t pack an emotional punch, and does not stand out after the fact at all. It did not get me thinking about anything, either, which is what I would have expected from a book dealing with the issues that this one touched on. I don’t know, maybe I am just harder to please, what with not being sixteen anymore and all that.