Freaksville by Kitty Keswick - Review

Description via goodreads:

High school is hard enough when you’re normal. There’s peer pressure, book reports, the in crowd and the enormous zit that has a life of its own. Having a family whose skeletons in the closet lean toward the paranormal is not a topper on anyone’s list. Sophomore Kasey Maxwell is busy juggling the typical teen angst. Add visions, ghosts and hairy four-legged monsters into the mix and you get FREAKSVILLE. It’s a wonder Kasey has survived.

Every woman in the Maxwell family has the gift of sight. A talent sixteen-year-old Kasey would gladly give up. All she wants is a normal life. Shopping and talking about boys with her best friend and long-time sidekick Gillie Godshall consume her days. Until Kasey has a vision about Josh Johnstone, the foreign exchange student from England. The vision leads her into new waters, a lead in a play, a haunted theater…and into the arms of the Josh. Yet, both Kasey and Josh have secrets lurking in dark corners. Can Kasey’s new romance survive FREAKSVILLE?

First off, I was, sadly, not a fan of Freaksville the writing style is similar to Sucks To Be Me, I felt...which was also loosely told in Blog or Journal style, but with Freaksville I felt like there was a lot left still on the table, so to speak. The "blog" posts, though they are compete with drawings and even comments at the end of each chapter, did not seem real. They almost felt forced, to me; I felt like in some chapters there was way to much information (stuff I would NEVER include in a blog post as a teen anyway), and in other chapters, I was left saying "that's it?"

I could tell that, Kitty Keswick, was going for funny – but sometimes, the jokes and satire just felt forced, so instead of laughing I found myself rolling my eyes. Kasey while likeable, almost seems beyond lucky, gaining the lead roll in a play she was not even going to try out for, to only to pages later be kissing the boy she's been crushing on. How did all that happen so fast?

Also, Freaksville has a lot and I mean A LOT going on...there's tons of great potential with in the pages of this book, lots of interesting story lines, which is great, one would think. But because there is so much, it borders on and in the end falls off the edge of being to much. I so wanted there to be more of a focus, really any one of the themes itself would have worked, the feud, the family gifts, and the relationship between Kasey and her best friend Gillie was entertaining, I would have loved to have seen more of that develop. But with all of it, all at one time, I felt lost!

Bottom Line – With it's ever changing plot, Freaksville was not a book I really enjoyed, though it did keep me intrigued enough to finish it. I am not sure I will be picking up the 2nd book in the series Furry and Freaked, but please don't let my review discourage you from picking this one up – several bloggers I know and trust have loved it; such as - Kate over at I Just Wanna Sit and Read and Kim at The Book Butterfly! I give Freaksville a 2 mushrooms.

Freaksville
By: Kitty Keswick
328 Pages
Published: January 8, 2010
Publisher: Leap Books