I have so many conflicting opinions on Sing, I don't even know where to begin. The thing is, I didn't want to like this book. After reading some bad reviews and realizing that this book is basically a fanfic written by Taylor Swift about herself, I was setting myself up to hate every minute of this story. For the first few chapters, I was nitpicking intensely and trying to find any excuse to DNF this, despite how much I hate to DNF a book. But somehow I just kept reading and reading. Sing had some kind of bad reality TV effect on me where no matter how much I disliked it, I stuck around to see what would happen next.
So what was so bad about Sing?
The Lack of Feeling - Every page of this book just felt so bland, dull, emotionless, etc. Imagine how your favorite book left an impact on you like a hole in the sand. For me, Sing wasn't even enough to leave a thumbprint. This novel moved maybe three grains of sand. Tops. And that's mostly because it annoyed me.
Empty Characters - Everyone was just so boring. There was nothing special or different about anyone in this story. I mean, you have a love interest from a remote island off the coast of Maine, and he doesn't even have any interesting quirks or even a dialect for that matter! Even Stephen King emphasizes on the speech of Mainers, so clearly it's a prominent thing if a guy from there takes notice of it. I'm just saying that if anybody had even a hint of a personality I might have upped this review by one star.
Pointless Drama Due to Misunderstandings - This is such a chick flick cliché, where there is some vague misunderstanding that leads to a big blowup and heartbreak and blah blah blah I'm so bored. It cannot be that hard to write believable drama. But I guess when you have zero character in your characters realistic emotion can be hard to convey.
The Continuity - Alongside the lacking characters and the pointless drama is the flip-flopping of opinions that goes on throughout. I swear every character either has extreme short-term memory loss or they're all very, very moody. Basically, to put this as simply as possible, I've recreated a short scene here:
Lily: Omg come on tour with me?
Love Interest: No, my family, they need me.
Lily: *sad face*
*french accent* Two Hours Later
Love Interest: Hey, I'm coming with you on tour. My family is fine without me.
Lily: Yay!
End Scene
This same situation happened way too many times, where somebody would change their mind for no reason and act as if this second opinion was what they believed all along. It was just annoying and unnecessary.
Was there anything good about Sing?
Well, Lily Ross presented some decent character development... But the book ends right at her realizing what she needs for herself, so who knows how long that really lasted, because we started with her having the same revelation, and we see where that led.
If I weren't the way that I am I probably would only have given Sing one star. But the hopeless romantic in me was rooting for Lily to finally find the one, boy-crazy, obsessive me was like wow, #relatable, and the pessimist in me was just dying to see Lily crash and burn and have her heart broken twice in one summer. These sides of me were satisfied, but bookish me unfortunately was not.