Dorothy Must Die // painfully whiny and cliché

Cliché after cliché after cliché after cliché.

This was so painfully cliché that I had to DNF at 27%. I couldn't take it. The premise was interesting, and this new and darker Oz was interesting and something I really wanted to explore, but all the twisted brambles and dark edges were diminished by ALL THOSE CLICHÉS. Some of them weren't even clichés precisely, just phrases that just absolutely did not need to be in the book because they sounded so childish. Here's a list:

"Don't make the same mistakes she made." Could he have been talking about Dorothy?
-- Did Amy really need to ask that question?

a girl from Kansas doesn't let much get to her.
-- What does that even mean? That line is just so empty.

It was a magically delicious apple!
-- explanation points? Seriously? Are we 5?

Ollie had gotten away. He had abandoned us, if you wanted to be technical about it.
-- This read like someone was trying to desperately reach a word count.

Her eyes were open but no one was home.
-- Clichés like this really don't work when I'm meant to take something seriously.

Someplace so dark I couldn't see my hands.
-- I think you get the point.

This was only a handful from the first 27% of the book. The thing with clichés is that they can work if you know you're using them, or twist them in a new way and make them your own. But these just didn't work. They completely took me out of the story and ruined any semblance of a dark atmosphere (which was limited anyway due to the intense telling and no showing).

To add to this, I could not stand the protagonist's voice. I imagine it was meant to seem sarcastic, but it doesn't come across strongly enough so she just sounds petty and bitter. There is a typical high school mean girl who bullied Amy, but I didn't appreciate the stereotyping of making her pregnant - with some lines suggesting she deserved it for being a mean person.

This isn't the only time Amy judges other women for their appearances. She describes Dorothy's dress in clear detail:

The bodice nipped, tucked and lifted. There was cleavage.
Lots of cleavage.
Dorothy's boobs were out to here, her legs up to there.

Sorry is this the middle ages? Are women still defined as sluts and villains by the way they dress? Amy says "Not that I was judging", but describing other female characters to be awful purely through appearance seems kind of judgemental to me.

This really juvenile narrative voice made it really hard for me to engage with the story itself, which may not have been half bad (although Amy does kiss a boy on the cheek after knowing him for 2 days so maybe I'm optimistic). I think the knowledge that this is a series also weighed on my mind, because I would not be able to handle another three books of this.