Instant Karma by Marissa Meyer

Summary from Goodreads:

In this young adult contemporary romance, a girl is suddenly gifted with the ability to cast instant karma on those around her—both good and bad.

Chronic overachiever Prudence Barnett is always quick to cast judgment on the lazy, rude, and arrogant residents of her coastal town. Her dreams of karmic justice are fulfilled when, after a night out with her friends, she wakes up with the sudden ability to cast instant karma on those around her. Pru giddily makes use of the power, punishing everyone from public vandals to karaoke hecklers, but there is one person on whom her powers consistently backfire: Quint Erickson, her slacker of a lab partner and all-around mortal enemy. Soon, Pru begins to uncover truths about Quint, her peers, and even herself that reveal how thin the line is between virtue and vanity, generosity and greed . . . love and hate.

Review:

I wasn’t really sure what to expect from Marissa Meyer’s first contemporary book. I went into it kind of blindly, hoping for something light and fluffy after just finishing a sort of heavier book. It definitely was a fluffy story. And while I sort of get why it’s marketed as contemporary, that’s not exactly true. In real life, you don’t fall and bump your head to wake up and suddenly have super powers….

On the other hand, as a Libra, control freak who sort of believes in Karma, this book appealed to me in all kinds of ways.  I always believed there was a weird sort of balance to life. I’ve always been sort of lucky (at winning things), but then I’ve been sort of unlucky at getting into accidents and injuring myself. There’s some kind of cosmic balance to it all, maybe? The idea of a teenage girl with control issues having the ability to dish out karmic justice was awesome to me.

My biggest qualm with the whole thing was that she didn’t play around with this enough! I would have seen how far my powers went. For instance, would they work on politicians? How physically close do I need to be for the powers to work? Could I save everyone that needed saving? It never occurred to her to go to a homeless shelter or bring good Karma to people who really needed it….

Prudence isn’t exactly the nicest main character. And I can see some people having trouble reading this book because of that. This doesn’t bother me too much. I like main characters that aren’t perfect. I also like main characters who know their flaws. She does. And I loved the romance in this book. It’s the hate to love kind of love story. I did get super annoyed with some of the karma story line and almost stopped reading at points, but I kept going back because the romance was excellent. Meyer knows how to write a great romance story.

Also, a lot of focus here is spent on right v wrong. Should Prudence take a check to rescue the animals or help a girl find her lost earring? Should she punish people for doing bad things because she has the ability to? Is it wrong to wear leather shoes? Is it wrong to eat meat from cows that come from farms that don’t treat animals well? And while some of it seems easy it answer and she doesn’t always answer it how I want her to (granted, she is a teenager), some of it is a bit gray. And maybe that’s the point? But, also, when looking for a fluffy, contemporary romance I’m not usually looking for a book filled with moral dilemmas.

All in all, there were some things I loved here (like the romance), and some things that needed a little work (like the super powers). It was a light, quirky book though and I’d still give another contemporary book by Meyer a shot. I give this one a 7/10.