Save Me, Kurt Cobain by Jenny Manzer – eARC Review

Publication Date:

March 8th, 2016

Publisher:

Delacorte Press

Goodreads Synopsis:

What if you discovered that Kurt Cobain was not only alive, but might be your real father? This nuanced and bittersweet YA debut will keep you guessing until the end.

Nico Cavan has been adrift since her mother vanished when she was four—maternal abandonment isn’t exactly something you can just get over. Staying invisible at school is how she copes—that and listening to alt music and summoning spirits on the Ouija board with her best friend and coconspirator in sarcasm, Obe. But when a chance discovery opens a window onto her mom’s wild past, it sparks an idea in her brain that takes hold and won’t let go.

On a ferry departing Seattle, Nico encounters a slight blond guy with piercing blue eyes wearing a hooded jacket. Something in her heart tells her that this feeling she has might actually be the truth, so she follows him to a remote cabin in the Pacific Northwest. When she is stranded there by a winter storm, fear and darkness collide, and the only one who can save Nico might just be herself.

Review:

*I was provided a copy by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

When I requested this book I did it because the blurb seemed pretty interesting and because I wanted to know why the main character thought she was Kurt Cobain’s daughter but in the end I really didn’t like this book.

First of all, it was too slow and it took me a long time to finally finish it. I have to be honest here, it took a long time too because at one point I wasn’t enjoying it and I really didn’t want to keep reading it. However I did finish this book because I thought that it could get better. Unfortunately in the end I really didn’t enjoy this book. Let me start by talking about the main character Nicola (aka Nico) who is 15 years-old. Nico grew up without knowing what happened to her mother. Her mother disappeared when she was 4 years-old but said she would come back. She never did. Because of this Nico has a lot of issues and wants to find out what happened to her mother. This seems interesting right?? It is. But then you have a book where the girl is completely obsessed with Kurt Cobain. Well, not only obsessed she’s crazy about Kurt Cobain. Nico can only think about him, his life and everything he did. I liked the details about his life but sometimes it was too much especially when some facts were repeated a few chapters after. Then, for a stupid reason the girl starts thinking she’s Kurt Cobain’s daughter. I knew this would happen but I thought she had a plausible reason. The problem is that she didn’t. She actually thought of herself as his daughter and if for some reason she thought about Cobain’s daughter she would think of her as a sister. She doesn’t even know the girl but she thought of her like a sister. Crazy right?!?! If she already looked a little bit crazy for me after all of this everything got worse when she saw a guy in a ferry that she thought was Cobain. I have no problems with this because I’m pretty sure a lot of guys look like him but she’s crazy when she decides to follow the guy, hide on his trunk and end up in a cabin in the woods alone with him on Christmas Eve only because she was obsessed with him and actually believed he was her father. Why??

I just couldn’t understand why she did that. The worst thing is that she had a father that she treated like sh*t and didn’t even care about how he would feel with his only daughter going missing on Christmas Eve.

I really had a lot of problems with this book but I did like a few things by the end of it and that’s why my rating is not lower. I really liked Nico’s best friend Obe. He was pretty cool. I also liked that after running away Nico had some character development and some closure about her mother disappearance but that’s it, I didn’t like anything else. I lie, I really liked that the book was set on 2006 for some reason.

In the end this book was a huge disappointment. I know it has a lot of amazing reviews so I really wanted to like it but maybe it wasn’t for me. I just didn’t like the main character at all and everything she would do would get me crazy. If you’re interested in the blurb you might give this one a try but I’m already telling you that if you don’t like a main character like what I described you probably won’t like this book.

Rating:

Have you read this book? If so, what did you think about it? If you haven’t read it would you read it?