The Loose Ends List Review

The Loose Ends List is a novel about loss, death, and forgiveness. Maddie, the main character, finds out that her gram is dying and is taking them on a death-with-dignity cruise. Though at first she doesn't want to go for fear of seeing death, she ends up going and making friends with some of the other passengers on board along with getting a boyfriend. This novel was made out to be hilarious and heartbreaking, but was pretty brash and a little insensitive at times.

This was one of my most anticipated books this year and I could not be more appalled and disappointed by this book. The family that this book is surrounding is rich and uptight minus the gram. The main character was insensitive calling the stocky family onboard "Ornaments", the new guy on board "Gollum", and calling other people rather rude nicknames. I guess that was supposed to be funny but I personally found it shocking that an author would write a main character like this. She also had IBS, but it was put into this "hilarious" light on how she "ruined another thong due to her IBS" or something along those lines. I know that there are people who have this and it's not funny or fun to deal with. Gram was a pretty good character, a little out there, but she managed to be an okay character. The rest of the family was either drunk or out there and I don't have anything good to say about any of them. I was more attached to the secondary characters than the main ones.

There's some serious insta-love in this book. Maddie lays eyes on Enzo and claims that she's in love with him. He was a bad character all by himself but them together was cry-worthy. He pressured her to smoke weed (even though she said she would never do it), he got her to drink, and have sex. Her virginity was a long joke through the whole book which was completely unnecessary. It was brought up so many times and it was as if her family was pushing her to have sex. I have no idea what realistic family does that. She mourned the loss of her boyfriend leaving more than the loss of her gram. It was all just really backwards.

I must say though, I did like the idea of a cruise travel book. I haven't read any books where the main character travels by cruise so this was new for me. Each stop was beautifully described and I had a clear picture of every destination that they landed on. I think this was probably the only thing I liked about the book.

I'm surprised so many people liked it, but maybe they read the main character's tone different than I did. 1.5/5 Stars.