Instant Karma - Marissa Meyer

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 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.

Blurb taken from Goodreads. 

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I am SUCH a huge fan of Marissa Meyer. I absolutely loved The Lunar Chronicles when I read the series a few years ago, and became OBSESSED with the Renegades series when I read it in 2020! When I found out Instant Karma was about to be released, I was so excited to get my hands on it, and really hoped I'd enjoy it. 

It was a really sweet read that I really enjoyed! It was nice and light-hearted, and I loved the little twist of karmic power! I did find the main character annoying at first, but I loved to see her growth over the course of the story. The sealife angle was something really different and refreshing, and it was genuinely a joy to read.

A great option for fans of YA fiction!

Rating: ✫✫✫✫

My Thoughts

The story of Instant Karma does have all the attributes of your typical YA story, filled with high school drama. I thought the school setting sparked off a very natural story that was able to develop during the summer break. Most of the story is set in the sealife rehabilitation, and that was something I hadn't seen before! It had so much potential and there are lots of different ideas that were explored. I liked the idea of fundraising to really drive the plot, but it did feel a little rushed towards the end. There was a lot of build-up and then final few chapters felt like they could have played out in a bit more of a fun way. That being said, though, the story was full of action!

One of the main concerns I had about the book when I was reading it was the main character herself, Pru. Although I did appreciate the kind of character she was portrayed as, I thought the control-freak side of her was taken ever so slightly too far. However, she was balanced out very well by Quint, and with his help she definitely grew over the course of the story. Character growth is something we love to see! There was a big cast of secondary characters, and I wish we'd seen some depth and growth in those as well. They were all there and had the potential to be really exciting personalities, but they weren't as fully formed as I would have liked.

The really unique theme in this book is karma. I loved the idea, and I just wish there had been more  of it! It didn't have as much of an impact on the story as I expected. It was definitely more part of the background, which I thought was a real shame. The idea of Quint being immune to Pru's karma was such a clever idea, and I wish it had been more central to the story. The message is that you should never judge a book by its cover, and I really wish that key point had been addressed more explicitly.

The Verdict

When I first started reading this book, I was so excited to tuck in, and I found that it definitely didn't disappoint me. It was very fun, light-hearted and easy to read, and had some quirky little elements to add something different too! 

I don't think this was a perfect read, because I thought some things (such as the karma theme, and the  characterisation of secondary characters) could have been slightly improved. However, it was a lovely sunny read and it was the pick-me-up I really needed.