Review: Vanishing Girls by Lauren Oliver

Let me start off by saying that I really, REALLY wanted to like this book, as I have been following Lauren Oliver since the beginning. Sorry to report, but my desire to like the book was outweighed by the fact that it took me over half the book to get into it and I suspected the ending within a few pages of beginning.

The story follows two sisters, Nick and Dara, both recovering from a terrible car accident. Evidently very close during childhood, the sisters have drifted apart both due to the accident and because of severe personality differences. The story is chopped up over different time periods (the “before” and the “after”), told sometimes in Nick’s voice and sometimes in Dara’s. In betwixt all that, there are bits of alternate media presented throughout, such as news postings, blogs, flyers, etc. that don’t quite fit, especially not at first. I felt like I was reading a poorer version of Ransom Riggs' Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, where the media DOES fit.

I felt no connection to either of the sisters; they were just telling me how they felt about the other... I thought "that's good and well," but I did not experience any sensations alongside them. I found it difficult to find redeeming qualities in either of the sisters, particularly Dara. She is impulsive and mean and not only selfish but self-destructive. I know I didn't get out much in high school, but I had a really hard time believing all mess she gets herself into. Even more unbelievable than what she does is what her sister enables her to do. Dara constantly nags Nick for being “better than her,” hinting at how goody-goody Nick supposedly is. I never see this in Nick. Maybe for comparison's sake, sure, she's a goody two shoes... But the book never talks about anything that really stands out about her. She is an athlete, I recall, but not a GREAT one. And that’s all there is.

I could go on about the characters and how detached I felt about them for a long time, but I'll only say one more thing... It isn't just that the girls as individuals are bland and hard to feel for; it is the girls' relationship too. Nick reminisces a great deal throughout the book about things that she did with Dara in childhood, but I'm just not buying it. There is nothing there that really holds them together, aside blood.

Let me just say, I am sick of the "heroine" doing bold and brash things, irrationally and alone, such as when Nick goes to the night club, to the police station, and then to the lighthouse all on her own. Perhaps some view this as courageous; I view it as stupid. I'd like to see girls that still have adventures, but don't manage to make incredibly stupid decisions along the way. I mean, I know she is half-crazed, but still. It's a horror movie waiting to happen. At least get your best friend Parker to go along with you. He might even shed some light on what really happens to Dara.

I know I’ve been rather harsh, but I didn’t really dislike this book. I have always liked Lauren Oliver. Before I Fall and the Delirium trilogy are all on my “read again” list. However, it greatly saddens me to have felt such indifference for this book, similar to how I felt for Panic, but better than how I felt for Rooms.

Sure, it isn't spectacular to me. I have a lot of issues with it, and I am frustrated beyond belief that I turned out to be right about “twist” in the ending. I almost threw the book in my anger, but then I realized that I was so apathetic about it for so much of the way that it really wasn't worth it.