Instant Karma by Marissa Meyer: Book Tour

Title: Instant Karma
Author: Marissa Meyer
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Pub Date: 11/03/2020
Genre: YA Romance
Edition: Hardcover
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Summary

In New York Times bestselling author Marissa Meyer’s 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 Daniels 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 mean gossips, but there is one person on whom her powers consistently backfire: Quint Erickson, her slacker of a lab partner. Quint is annoyingly cute and impressively noble, especially when it comes to his work with the rescue center for local sea animals.

When Pru resigns herself to working at the rescue center for extra credit, she begins to uncover truths about baby otters, environmental upheaval, and romantic crossed signals—not necessarily in that order. Her newfound karmic insights reveal how thin the line is between virtue and vanity, generosity and greed . . . love and hate… and fate.

Review

Instant Karma was my first Marissa Meyer book and wow she does romance so well! This book was highly entertaining from me feeling secondhand embarrassment several times to laughing and swooning and everything in between. There were so many scenes between Quint and Prudence that gave me an automatic serotonin boost.

I think the characters were one of the highlights of this story because Quint, Jude, and Ari were so great. I would read a whole spinoff about Jude and his D&D playing and quest to get with Maya. I also loved angry Quint. He kept his foot on Prudence’s neck a lot and made her really think about how she was assuming the worst about him. Also, who doesn’t love someone who is sweet and cares about animals.

I also really liked the setting of this story too from the town to the animal rescue center. I appreciated the research Meyer did on rehabilitation and rescue centers, and I spent a few minutes just looking at the Instagram she talked about in her acknowledgements.

Now on to Prudence. She was a lot. I love unlikeable characters and always give YA characters lenience, but Prudence was a little too grating for my tastes. She also was kind of a music snob which was slightly funny. There were several parts though where I empathized with her and was like “oh that’s definitely me.” There was a moment she enacted karma against a man that parked in a handicapped spot without a handicapped license plate even though he didn’t look handicapped and while I understood the sentiment it did seem a little ableist considering all disabilities aren’t visible. So, Prudence definitely had a lot to work on over the course of the summer. Thus, I liked seeing her moments of growth because there were things I would call her out on in the beginning of the book that she reflected on later in the book as she started thinking about how she using her powers.

The romance in the book definitely saved it for me. I love moments when characters get deep with each other and start revealing things about themselves, so the nighttime rescue center scene gave me life. I will say this book was a bit long for my preferences when it comes to YA romances, but considering how the second half of the book was my favorite, the length worked out.

Overall, I’m glad I kept with this book because I actually enjoyed it a whole lot. I love doing karaoke and embarrassing myself, so I’m truly bound to like any book with karaoke scenes. Also, the cover is so so good. They look so cute, and I love how Prudence is actually curvy as described in the book.

Author

Marissa Meyer is the #1 New York Times–bestselling author of the Renegades Trilogy, The Lunar Chronicles series, the Wires and Nerve graphic novels, and The Lunar Chronicles Coloring Book. Her first standalone novel, Heartless, was also a #1 New York Times bestseller. Marissa created and hosts a podcast called The Happy Writer. She lives in Tacoma, Washington, with her husband and their two daughters. Find her at marissameyer.com or on social media @marissameyerauthor.

Where to Buy

Bookshop | IndieBound | B&N | Book Depository | Amazon

Thank you so much for reading my tour post for Instant Karma. If you had the power to enact instant karma on people would you use that power?
*Thank you to the publisher for the free copy of the book. All opinions are my own*