Mini Reviews ft. Vanishing Girls and Unspoken

Here's a couple mini reviews.  The format is a little all over the place because I decided I didn't want to make any more of these "My Take" picture things, but I still had one left over that I had pre-made.  So, sorry about that, but I'm sure it won't be too disrupting.

Vanishing Girls by Lauren Oliver

This book managed to get two stars from me.  As I said above, it was overall just much too slow and frankly pointless for me.  By the end, I was left with an overwhelming feeling of anger - I'd spent all this time reading for that?!  I felt like the ending didn't add up - although I'm sure other people feel differently.  Another thing that annoyed me was that there was the covering up of past events from the reader by the narrators [or narrator, singular].  It was frustrating for me that the narrators weren't telling the reader everything they knew just to prolong the story.  I also didn't like the characters, but that didn't really affect how I felt about the book [except for that annoying aunt, saying she talked to Dara every day - that made me more angry.  Also Parker because I felt like I was meant to be rooting for him and Nick, but I just thought he was awful].  The only good things about the book (for me) were that the characters were fairly realistic and I liked the setting of the amusement park.

Unspoken by Sarah Rees Brennan

This was an okay read for me.  It was entertaining and funny at times, but other times it was predictable and the characters' choices were annoying.  The story follows Kami and Jared, teenagers who thought each other to be imaginary friends until they end up meeting in the small town where Kami lives.  Strange, mysterious things occur and the main plot is Kami and her friends trying to figure out who is behind it all.
I liked Kami, the main character.  Her humour, fearlessness and determination made her both a strong female protagonist, though probably not in the way you'd expect, and perfect for working for the school paper.  She definitely had her flaws too - sometimes she could be mean without realising it and she rushed into things - but that made her more realistic.  The main problems I did have with her though, were some of her choices in regard to Jared and Ash - and their choices in regard to her.  They could be so frustrating!  A lot of time was spent explaining that [Kami was pushing Jared out because she didn't want to get hurt etc even though she's supposed to be always on his side and he's always on her side and she definitely trusted him.  I thought that the positives of being that close to him would have outweighed this "possibly getting hurt" business, since it seemed so unlikely to happen.  Also Kami wasn't the only one adding to this frustration - Jared was the worst at giving mixed signals, and shutting Kami out too!  So much unnecessary drama!]  That was the biggest negative of this book to me.  It's also worth mentioning that whilst some of the jokes made me laugh nonstop, others missed the mark.  One more issue is that I thought the mystery could have been solved a lot earlier on - I figured out most of it pretty quickly. [Also I totally caught on that Angela liked Holly waaay before Kami did!].  Overall, this was a nice, sweet book that was also extremely frustrating.

Have you read either of these?  Let me know your thoughts!