Don't Read with Me: The Rule of One by Ashley Saunders and Leslie Saunders

So I tried to read this book:

I thought the premise sounded really interesting, so I've had it on my wishlist for a while and a dear friend bought it for me.

Amazon has this to say about it:

In their world, telling the truth has become the most dangerous crime of all.
In the near-future United States, a one-child policy is ruthlessly enforced. Everyone follows the Rule of One. But Ava Goodwin, daughter of the head of the Texas Family Planning Division, has a secret—one her mother died to keep and her father has helped to hide for her entire life.
She has an identical twin sister, Mira.
For eighteen years Ava and Mira have lived as one, trading places day after day, maintaining an interchangeable existence down to the most telling detail. But when their charade is exposed, their worst nightmare begins. Now they must leave behind the father they love and fight for their lives.
Branded as traitors, hunted as fugitives, and pushed to discover just how far they’ll go in order to stay alive, Ava and Mira rush headlong into a terrifying unknown.

This book isn't bad, necessarily.  The reason I couldn't get more than a few pages into it was because it was too similar to a Netflix Original Movie What Happened to Monday

IMDB has this to say:

In a world where families are limited to one child due to overpopulation, a set of identical septuplets must avoid being put to a long sleep by the government and dangerous infighting while investigating the disappearance of one of their own. 

I watched this movie when it first came out, and easily dozens of times since then. I love this movie. I did not expect The Rule of One to remind me so much of What Happened to Monday, and so, I had to stop reading it and switch to something else. That's not to say that I won't read this book someday later, but for now, I'd rather re-watch this movie!

Don't Read with Me: The Eternal Ones by Kirsten Miller

So, I found a book in my bookcase that looked interesting called The Eternal Ones.

The Amazon blurb says:

Haven Moore can't control her visions of a past with a boy called Ethan and a life in New York that ended in fiery tragedy. In our present, she designs beautiful dresses for her classmates with her best friend Beau. Dressmaking keeps her sane, since she lives with her widowed and heartbroken mother in her tyrannical grandmother's house in Snope City, a tiny town in Tennessee. Then an impossible group of coincidences conspire to force her to flee to New York, to discover who she is, and who she was.
In New York, Haven meets Iain Morrow and is swept into an epic love affair that feels both deeply fated and terribly dangerous. Iain is suspected of murdering a rock star and Haven wonders, could he have murdered her in a past life? She visits the Ouroboros Society and discovers a murky world of reincarnation that stretches across millennia. Haven must discover the secrets hidden in her past lives, and loves, before all is lost and the cycle begins again.

In the very first sentence, we hear about New York. Four sentences into the blurb, we find out she has to flee to New York.

I am 97 pages into this book.

Guess where we are not.

The first 97 pages are full of cliches and stereotypes:

• The gay best friend in a small country town who helps the protagonist make prom dresses. 
• The God-fearing grandmother who believes the protagonist is possessed by a demon.
• The semi-creepy clergy-man who seems just a hair over the line with his familiarity with the protagonist (a 17-year-old girl).
• The protagonist describes herself as ugly, when the description is of an objectively pretty girl. 

97 pages in, and I still haven't reached the hook. I gave it 97 pages, and it very clearly feels like it is still in the introduction part. There's no hook yet. I do not have time to read 97 pages with no hook.

I have always said that Life is Too Short for Bad Books. The thing is, Life ALWAYS was Too Short for Bad Books, but now it is REALLY Too Short for Bad Books.

So.

I'm not finishing this book. If it sounds interesting to anyone (especially local), let me know and I'll give it to you. If no one wants it and you are not local, I'll mail it to you.

What book should I try next?