Review: Earth Girl by Janet Edwards

Title: Earth Girl (Earth Girl, #1)

Author: Janet Edwards

Publication date: March 5, 2013

Publisher: Prometheus Books (PYR)

Genre(s): Young/New Adult (Sci-Fi)

Source: Publisher

Format: Finished Copy

Pages: 271

Goodreads | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Indigo

2788. Only the handicapped live on Earth. Eighteen-year-old Jarra is among the one in a thousand people born with an immune system that cannot survive on other planets. Sent to Earth at birth to save her life, she has been abandoned by her parents. She can’t travel to other worlds, but she can watch their vids, and she knows all the jokes they make. She’s an “ape,” a “throwback,” but this is one ape girl who won’t give in.

Jarra makes up a fake military background for herself and joins a class of norms who are on Earth for a year of practical history studies excavating the dangerous ruins of the old cities. She wants to see their faces when they find out they’ve been fooled into thinking an ape girl was a norm. She isn’t expecting to make friends with the enemy, to risk her life to save norms, or to fall in love.

Earth Girl had so much promise. Not only was the synopsis and the cover appealing, but the first 50 pages of the novel had me so excited to dig deeper into the story. Unfortunately, as soon as Jarra made it to the Norm school, it felt like the author hit the break on the book and we got stuck in horrible rush hour traffic, moving inch by inch, meaning barely getting any development in the plot whatsoever. I am really sad to say this but Earth Girl is officially my biggest disappointment of 2013. I have read many good reviews of it and I was expecting to really like it. However I did not enjoy the writing style with the weird terminologies such as Snaz! and Nuke!, I did not enjoy how most of the novel was spent following Jarra at school doing the same thing every single day, going to dig sites, showing off how smart she is, then going to bed. The plot stayed like that for more than 100 pages.. I kept on wondering if we were EVER going to get any development because I honestly don't see the point in continuing to read it. 

THEN, Jarra finally reconnects with her parents and I sit up straighter and wait for some character and plot development. Something big happens a little while after that but you know how Jarra takes it? in one tiny paragraph we read how pissed and heartbroken she is.. then the next chapter? it is like nothing happened. She is back to being her happy go lucky self to the point that she forgot who she is. Jarra is an handicapped, an ape, meaning someone who can't travel to different worlds like the Norms. Of course no one at her norm school knows about this. One day after the big event she disregarded, the school has to evacuate from earth to go to another planet, do you know what Jarra did? she went to PACK and get READY to go. I was like "umm, aren't you a handicapped? won't you go into anaphylactic shock as soon as you portal? WHERE IS YOUR MIND WOMAN?!" I felt that the author threw us out of Jarra's mind as soon as the big event happened. I couldn't understand what was going on and was so confused throughout the rest of the novel. 

I expected there to be action, to be some thrilling plot and great characters. I expected to be at least not let down by the romance but I was wrong. The love interest? I knew nothing about other than his sudden desire to marry Jarra and his fetish of being thrown over the shoulder by Jarra... please tell me it is as weird as I thought? the romance fell flat; one second Jarra didn't even care about the guy but the next second she is in love with him. I got so frustrated with this novel, I wanted to drop it many times but stuck around with it.I honestly wouldn't recommend it to anyone but again, I know people who have read it and loved it, I seem to be in the minority with my rating but that's my final verdict after reading Earth Girl. 

More varying reviews on Earth Girl by:
Esther's Ever After
The Social Potato
Two Broke Girls Reading