Goodreads Link: Shucked
Author: Megg Jensen
Genre: YA/Teen Adventure
Rating: 3/5 stars

The book was cute to start, and I enjoyed the premise of the world-weary travel trying to fit in to a “normal” public high school. Tabitha’s voice is hilarious and she carries the story. I also liked her friend Becky and her grandmother Mimi, and her relationships with these two characters provided a lot of entertainment.

However, the book suffered some identity issues. In between the main plot of Tabitha trying to fit into the town, avoid dating the bad boy, and figure out her mom’s past history before she left the town, there was a weird international spy thread involving stolen archeological artifacts and some serious conspiracy stuff. These parts of the book felt tacked-on, they weren’t well-developed, and they distracted from the story about Tabitha. I didn’t expect it in the book at all, so it really threw me for a loop–not to mention that it was completely unbelievable. By the time Tabitha was fighting off ninjas and rogue spies, I found myself skimming just to get to the end, because it felt like it had morphed into a completely different book.

If either of these two plots had been handled separately, or if they had meshed together better in the book, I would have really enjoyed it, because the author’s writing style was breezy and easy to follow. But they felt like they just clashed too much and were competing for screen time. I was rather disappointed. I felt like some of sub plots (Tabitha’s relationship with her mom or her dad, and her conflict with her bad boy crush) didn’t really get resolved well because of the lack of space.

I would read other books by this author if they were better managed instead of two books mashed into one.