Lose Time Reading

The Ruining was easily one of my most anticipated debuts of 2013. I thought the summary sounded really intriguing and I expected it to be one of my first debuts read. Obviously that didn’t happen but as soon as I picked this up from the library I dove right in.Annie , the main character, leaves her broken home to go to school in California. She found a job with a very wealthy family where she is the live in nanny. The family is incredibely wealthy, so Annie has more than she ever has in her life as well as they instantly take her under their wing, especially Libby. I finished The Ruining a week ago and I can still not even piece together my thoughts on Annie. She was just weird. I have little to no idea whether I liked her or not. I guess at the beginning I did like her well enough but towards the end I had no idea, I suppose that is the idea with an unreliable narrator. She was really needy though. It’s like she sought constant approval for her actions. I enjoyed her relationship with Zoe though. She was really caring and treated Zoe remarkably. Libby and Walker were instantly hated on my part. I knew there was something strange about them from the beginning and they had a very sneaky demeanor about them.It’s hard to describe what I liked and didn’t like without giving away some of the details. I’m not sure if the reader was supposed to be able to guess the twists, but I did. Pretty much straight from the beginning I caught on to quite a few of them. If you were meant to be strung along for answers, that’s not how it turned out. Despite figuring out the mystery early on, I really enjoyed the story itself. I despised most of the characters but ANna Collomore’s writing is great. I actually had a very hard time with what was real and not real, so she had Annie’s breakdown fabulously crafted. The ending was unsatisfying to me. I will not spoil if for others but I just thought it left way to much for the reader to wonder on. I hate stand alones like that, I’d like to have all the ends(or the majority of them) tied up upon completion.All in All, The Ruining is an interesting novel. The story is a bit strange, and pretty unrealistic as far as I’m concerned. The characters are angering but the fact the main character slowly starts to have a mental breakdown makes the plot incredibly intriguing. It’s very easy to read and I wanted to read it in one sitting just to see how the ending was. It didn’t blow me a away but I do think that anyone who enjoys stories like this will enjoy the mystery.