Don't Cosplay with My Heart by Cecil Castellucci

e-ARC, 288 pages
Release Date: January 2, 2018
Published by: Soho Teen
Read from: January 15, 2018
Stand-alone
Source: Edelweiss (I received a copy of this book from the Edelweiss and the Publisher in exchange for a just and honest review. This did nothing to influence my review.) 
For fans of:  Contemporary, Romance, YA

     When Edan Kupferman dresses up like her favorite character, Gargantua, she feels tall and powerful. That's important right now, because her family is a mess, her best friend is gone for the summer, her crush is confusing, and Edan's feeling small and not sure which end is up.
     When Edan's cosplaying, she can be angry, loud, and not the good girl everyone thinks she is. And when she's at conventions, she feels like she's found her own Team Tomorrow. But when her personal life starts to spiral out of control, Edan has to figure out whether she needs a sidekick, or if she has the strength to be the hero of her own story.

*MY THOUGHTS*

     When I first saw the title of this I just KNEW it was going to be something that I loved. And yet when I finally got around to it, it just didn't meet my expectations. 
     Edan Kupferman 's favorite comic is Team Tomorrow. They also have her favorite hero/villain, Gargantua. Becoming her as a cosplay character makes her feel so much better than she has been, espcially since life isn't exactly stellar at the moment. 
     Ok, so maybe because I read other books that feature nerds, I was expecting much more than I was given. It just seemed to not flow like those others did. This was so unfortunate because I really wanted to like this book. I love cosplay and I just knew putting it with a book was something I needed. But I just could not with the storyline. There was wayyyyyy too much going on. From the very first page we are thrust into this really bad situation with her dad. I made it to page 50 with it still being a bad thing but the main character never really explained it. She glossed over what it was, but there was no real explantation.
     And then there was the way she repeated EVERYTHING. Maybe that's the writing style, but it got old really fast. I did not care to read the phrase "I like" something repeated so many different times. It got so annoying. (Check page 8 in the final print. It does that on numerous pages for different phrases. 
     I also didn't care for the main character. To say I was inside her head for 50 pages, I still felt like I didn't know her. She never gave us her background and we never knew more about her besides the fact that she cosplays and has never been to a conference. That's all we find out in 50 pages. I just could not finish this.
     It doesn't seem like it's a bad story, but it's just not for me. I made it to page 50 and could not continue. 
DNF @ page 50

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