Secrets, Lies, and Algebra (Do the Math Series #1) Book

Okay, first things first. Tess is annoying.
Second things second, this is not for kids, even though it feels like it is. I mean, come on, there's a suicide involved. Well, unless the child can handle it, they can read it. They'll enjoy it more than middle schoolers, I think.



Secrets, Lies, and Algebra is about this girl named Tess who pretty much thinks about math all the time. Then, she hears that her mom's friend Rob's wife died in a car from carbon monoxide poisoning, and the police say it was suicide. Because Rob was saying weird and "creepy" (which actually wasn't that creepy at all) things to her mom, Tess freaks and says that her mom needs to tell the police that Rob could have murdered his wife.

So, that's the SECRET. Her mom thinks that Rob killed his wife.

Then we get sucked into Tess's school life, and we meet her friend Miranda and Sammy, and she decides to tell the secret to them.

FIRST OF ALL: Tess broke the promise and disobeyed her mother by telling Miranda and Sammy.
SECOND OF ALL: Even though she deliberately said that it might not be a good idea to tell them, SHE DOES ANYWAY.
She knew that Sammy took things to "the fifth power," and she knew that there was some possibility that Sammy would share this information, and she TELLS THEM ANYWAY.

*smh*

I mean, sure, she's a freaking teenager, and teenagers do stupid things, but this? This is more like a first grader wondering if she can tell her friends about this secret she has.


So here's the lie: Tess said to her mother that she only told Miranda and Sammy, but she also told her history teacher Mr. Wright. She didn't tell her mother that until later in the book.

YOU CALL THAT A BIG ENOUGH LIE TO PUT IT IN THE TITLE?!
I can't even find/remember another lie! So what the heck?

THE ALGEBRA: There was plenty of that. The bad part of the algebra, though: it wasn't relevant to the story. It was just random math facts that weren't even needed to be put.


I'm going to talk about Tess.
A) She's crazy about math. At the end of the book, she gets an award called the Math Whiz.
What a surprise! Not.
B) She's disrespectful. She disobeys her parents AND corrects her teachers because they say stupid things about math that irritate her.
Jeez, girl, chill.
C) She doesn't realize that there are things she can't tell her friends.

There is no character development. At least, I can't find any.


I'll complain about the summary now.

WHAT ROMANCE? THERE WAS NO ROMANCE.
Is it, like, with that Damien guy? He just stood there, smiled, said like two words to her everyday, and was gone. You call that a romance? She barely even talked to him! She didn't say ANYTHING about trying to confess to him. She didn't even mention if she had a crush on that guy.

VARIABLES? THAT'S HER MAJOR PROBLEM?
She only talked about how variables irritated her in ONE PAGE. She didn't say anything about variables before, so why the heck is that in the summary?

HER LIFE CHANGES? HOW?
Her life is freaking BORING.


Another problem that irritated me:

WHAT DOES A MURDER HAVE TO DO WITH ALGEBRA?
I feel like that was irrelevant to the story, even though that was the main thing. Heck, I would have enjoyed a story just about Tess, a romance, friend drama, and sure, you can put the test-cheating in there.
But, whoa, a MURDER? Well, actually, a SUICIDE?

Another problem that irritates me:

THEY NEVER SOLVED THE MYSTERY.
She pretty much just decided to give up.
Did Rob actually kill Nina some how? Or was it really suicide?
I think the author pretty much said that it was probably a suicide, but it wasn't blatantly stated: "Oh, it really was a suicide. I guess I freaked out over nothing. Oh well, back to my life about math and everything."

Like, seriously, they never said, and the ending was them making a circle staring at the inside of their ankles.

Talk about cheesy endings.


It was tooooo short. Nothing really big happened.
It didn't have much of a climax, really.


So yeah. Annoying book.
I only read it because of school.

*sigh* It could have been better. I think.