The Fortunes of Indigo Skye by Deb Caletti

Title: The Fortunes of Indigo Skye

Author: Deb Caletti

Published: March 2008

Synopsis from goodreads.com:

Eighteen-year-old Indigo is looking forward to becoming a full-time waitress after high school graduation, but her life is turned upside down by a large check given to her by a customer who appreciates that she cares enough to scold him about smoking.

This is my first Deb Caletti, and it makes me wonder why on earth I waited so long to pick up one of her books. It was a really enjoyable book, and I can tell that Caletti is a very talented writer. That being said, it fell a little flat for me.

Let's start with Indigo, the main character. She's supposed to be eighteen. The book starts at the end of her senior year. I really didn't see her as eighteen. At times she was older, at times she was younger. She could be extremely observant, cynical, and wiser than her years at times, especially in the beginning, but she could be whiny, dense, and unable to see her own life at others, towards the end. I definitely liked her better in the beginning, when she was just a normal girl with a normal waitress job and a normal boyfriend. That was interesting to me, her life and the people in it.

Then, near the halfway point, she suddenly gets 2.5 million dollars. Which WHOA is a lot of money. I mean, what do you DO with all of that money? Well, the rest of the book is about that: what Indigo does with the money and how she handles it. Except that felt false to me. I had a hard time believing that as soon as Indigo got money she turned into this whiny ten year old. That she would blow it on things like a singing soap dispenser. I don't know, maybe it's because that's definitely not how I would handle it, so I had a hard time believing that anyone would act like that.

The first half of the book I really enjoyed, the second half, not so much. Overall Indigo was a good main character, but at times I just wanted to smack her over the head. It wasn't a bad book by any means, just not as good as it could have been.

Characters: 7/10
Plot: 7/10
Originality: 8/10
Writing: 9/10
Ending: 9/10
Overall: 40/50 B-
Cover/Title: 2/5 The title isn't bad...I just doesn't completely fit the story. The cover is nice, but it had NOTHING to do with the story.
Recommend to: fans of Sarah Dessen
Hooked by: the first few pages