Review: The Pledge

Title: The Pledge

Author: Kimberly Derting

Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

Part of a Series?: First in series

Goodreads Summary:

In the violent country of Ludania, the classes are strictly divided by the language they speak. The smallest transgression, like looking a member of a higher class in the eye while they are speaking their native tongue, results in immediate execution. Seventeen-year-old Charlaina has always been able to understand the languages of all classes, and she's spent her life trying to hide her secret. The only place she can really be free is the drug-fueled underground clubs where people go to shake off the oppressive rules of the world they live in. It's there that she meets a beautiful and mysterious boy named Max who speaks a language she's never heard before . . . and her secret is almost exposed.

Charlie is intensely attracted to Max, even though she can't be sure where his real loyalties lie. As the emergency drills give way to real crisis and the violence escalates, it becomes clear that Charlie is the key to something much bigger: her country's only chance for freedom from the terrible power of a deadly regime.

Review:

Derting had a major identity crisis while writing The Pledge. She created an unholy combination of high fantasy and dystopia with, arguably, some smatterings of pure chicklit. To be clear, genre hopping is not bad. I like it when books try to do something fun and creative. The Pledge was not particularly fun and not even close to creative.

Is this book set in an AU or what? This is the first dystopia that really doesn't explain how everything went to hell in a handbag. That possibly contributed to my growing lack of comprehension about what setting Derting was creating. I can deal with queens and royalty and what not. However, I could not get past how little was explained (or insinuated) about the origins of the dystopian society. I didn't need Derting to explicitly say, "Well, this war happened, and this government fell, and this monarchy rose, etc. etc." No, that would've been overkill. I was thinking it would've been better if the author had taken a page out of Margaret Atwood's handbook on providing just enough clues to give the reader a picture. I didn't get anything like that so I resorted to just letting myself get blasted with unintentional anachronisms. For example, Charlie wears a tunic but there are electric lights...and cars. Whoever created the New World Order in the past must've had a thing for Medieval garb. Also, can I just ask a question in general? Was this really a dystopia? Dystopias typically are based more in reality than fantasy. Even fantastic dystopias like The Hunger Games or Enclave have obvious foundations in the real world. So if Charlie's gift of tongues is magic oriented, where does that leave The Pledge? Is it wrong to tag this as a dystopian book? IMO, dystopian books should not broach the topic of magic...it takes away from the believability.

Personally, I love becoming invested in characters. I wanted to attach myself to Team Charlie so much! I've always had this little dream of becoming a polyglot (I'd learn Swahili, Korean, Russian, some obscure Arabic dialect, and Dutch), and have I ever read a book about a protagonist who could understand EVERY language in existence (can Charlie speak all languages though? I don't think that point was ever explained)? When I originally read the book summary several months ago, I practically died with excitement. Sadly, Charlie disappointed me on all accounts. First off, she is such a Mary Sue. Did anyone pick up on that? She's kind, protective, intelligent (except when it comes to the important stuff), and uber boy crazy. Apparently, she also is eerily similar to Derting's other protagonist as well...although I can't say if this is true or not since I haven't read The Body Finder. For someone so perfect, Charlie spends a lot of time internal monologuing about how unhappy she is with whatever situation she's gotten herself into. This story was completely focused on Charlie, despite the narrative switches to the other minor characters. I felt Derting included the secondary chapters as an afterthought, which really hurt the story in general because it left the supporting cast a little washed out.

Last point, I swear. Here we have a plot that had so much potential: a girl can understand languages finds out she might be the key to a nationwide revolution. Yet nothing in this book gave me a true WTF moment. Spoilers follow. Max is a prince? I got that "subtle" clue about five chapters before Charlie figured it out. Charlie's the long lost princess? That was obvious from the moment Sabara mentioned her hunt for trying to find a replacement body. Angelina can heal people? That isn't even a plot twist! That's Derting failing to introduce this concept fluidly. The tortured boy who doesn't get a name until the last paragraph in the scene is actually Aron? My question in response is who else could it be? Nothing Derting included in this book had a wow factor capable of eliciting any major emotional response.

If anything, I'd read the sequel just to see how Derting stretches the plot. But nothing about this first installment begged for a series continuation to me. 

Review: Shattered Souls

Title: Shattered Souls

Author: Mary Lindsey

Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

Part of a Series?: Standalone

Goodreads Summary:

 Lenzi hears voices and has visions - gravestones, floods, a boy with steel gray eyes. Her boyfriend, Zak, can't help, and everything keeps getting louder and more intense. Then Lenzi meets Alden, the boy from her dreams, who reveals that she's a reincarnated Speaker - someone who can talk to and help lost souls - and that he has been her Protector for centuries.

Now Lenzi must choose between her life with Zak and the life she is destined to lead with Alden. But time is running out: a malevolent spirit is out to destroy Lenzi, and he will kill her if she doesn't make a decision soon.

Review:

2.5 stars

This book was a pain to finish. It took me twice as long to read, and I had to pick up different books to keep myself occupied. The main thing I think was bad about this book was that Mary Lindsey was really inconsistent with the quality of her plot. She shoved all of the boring stuff into the first 75% of the book, leaving only a few chapters for the exciting action and mystery.

I was totally overwhelmed with the sheer number of clichés that riddled this book. Had it not been for the predictability, I think Shattered Souls would've been fairly interesting. It had reincarnation, ghosts, exorcisms, and the sweet smell of faux-bureaucracy. But we also got a whole lot of messy love triangles, stupid protagonist decisions, and frustrating "I love you but can't be with you" speeches. 

Lenzi is awfully difficult to support. She is weak, whiney, and overall a pain to read about, especially in the first half of the book where she alternates between rejecting Alden's help with her ghost problem and playing 20 questions with him even when they're on a time crunch. Her ongoing identity crisis didn't help either. Furthermore, she falls into the "innocent seductress" stereotype too easily. She leads on Zak, her current boyfriend, even though she clearly loves Alden from day 1. Can I just tell all YA female protagonists with love triangle issues that CHEATING IS CHEATING, NO EXCEPTIONS. If you have a boyfriend but like someone else, break up with the boyfriend before you kiss the other guy. Because if you kiss that other guy before breaking up with said boyfriend, you are a CHEATER and deserve no sympathy if said boyfriend tries to kill you in a fit of drunken stupidity.

The plot is a little disjointed and uneven. I can sort of understand the amount of infodumping in this book. There is a lot of backstory that we need to know. However, told through Alden in monologues that compose several pages, the flood of new information made me feel overwhelmed and frustrated at the stagnation of the story's real plot! The minor restitutions scattered around the chapters are sort of satisfying (and really, really interesting. no sarcasm there), but they only served to increase my impatience. When we finally get to the Big Baddy of the book, the final conclusion to the battle left me wanting more. Even Lenzi comments on how fast everything was going; literally, we meet, learn about, and beat the Big Baddy all in the span of half a day. 

Overall, I thought this book had potential. Unfortunately, I just got tired of wading through the clichés in search of a good story.

Review: Rot & Ruin

Title: Rot & Ruin

Author: Jonathan Maberry

Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

Part of a Series?: First in series

Goodreads Summary:

 In the zombie-infested, post-apocalyptic America where Benny Imura lives, every teenager must find a job by the time they turn fifteen or get their rations cut in half. Benny doesn’t want to apprentice as a zombie hunter with his boring older brother Tom, but he has no choice. He expects a tedious job whacking zoms for cash—but what he gets is a vocation that will teach him what it means to be human.

Acclaimed horror author Jonathan Maberry makes his young adult debut with this detail-rich depiction of a post-apocalyptic world where humanity has fallen, the dead have risen, and danger is always imminent.

Review:

Help! I'm on a 2-star book streak! 2012 really is bad luck :(

I don't have too much to say about this particular book...I'm sure if you really like zombie books, then you will like this. Rot & Ruin isn't your typical zombie book though. It portrays those mindless bullet fodder as human beings for once! 

Maberry did several things differently than I'm used to. 

1) After humanity struggled back into semisurvival mode after the apocalypse, teenagers were made to pick jobs when they turn 15. These jobs aren't like mailman or schoolteacher. Jobs highlighted include cadaverine bottler (think zombie sweat), erosion artist, minimum wage worker who bangs on fences with sticks to attract "zoms", etc. The creativity and realism are present, but sometimes this formula doesn't equate exactly to the most compelling read. Zombie hunting is the most captivating aspect of Rot & Ruin, but for some reason, Maberry slowly guides us around town, showing us some of the more...scintillating characters in town. I especially liked the stereotypical Dumb and Dumber characters that Benny, for some reason, idolized blindly. Fun stuff. I think, for the sake of realism, Maberry detracted a lot from the first part of the book's fun adventure.

2) Bromance is a hard thing to write, especially when Benny is completely unlikeable and Tom is a self righteous idiot. I think Maberry had the right idea in creating a younger brother who would slowly come to understand his older brother while also maturing his own view of the world at the same time. It sounds good on paper, doesn't it? However, I have to say that the execution was poor. Benny and Tom's relationship slowly progressed from infuriating to boring. I knew something was wrong with their relationship when I started wishing Benny would go back to outright hating his older brother...at least it was interesting! After reading this book, I had to go watch season 4 ofSupernatural because no one has more bromance than the Winchester brothers. 

3) I just overall didn't think the plot was that intriguing. There were some interesting parts, but when I could neither root for the good guys or bad guys (both sides were utterly hopeless, I swear), my interest came down to a grinding halt. 

Honestly, I'm getting a little tired of 2 star books! 2012 is not going well for me. But I actually think a lot of people would like this book. It just didn't appeal to me personally. Try it out and see.


====


See my original review at Goodreads or check me out on Twitter!
Followers will be given hugs. 

Review: Shatter Me

 Title: Shatter Me

Author: Tahereh Mafi

Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

Part of a Series?: First in series

Goodreads Summary:

Juliette hasn't touched anyone in exactly 264 days. 

The last time she did, it was an accident, but The Reestablishment locked her up for murder. No one knows why Juliette's touch is fatal. As long as she doesn't hurt anyone else, no one really cares. The world is too busy crumbling to pieces to pay attention to a 17-year-old girl. Diseases are destroying the population, food is hard to find, birds don't fly anymore, and the clouds are the wrong color. 

The Reestablishment said their way was the only way to fix things, so they threw Juliette in a cell. Now so many people are dead that the survivors are whispering war-- and The Reestablishment has changed its mind. Maybe Juliette is more than a tortured soul stuffed into a poisonous body. Maybe she's exactly what they need right now. 

Juliette has to make a choice: Be a weapon. Or be a warrior. 

In this electrifying debut, Tahereh Mafi presents a world as riveting asThe Hunger Games and a superhero story as thrilling as The X-Men. Full of pulse-pounding romance, intoxicating villainy, and high-stakes choices, Shatter Me is a fresh and original dystopian novel—with a paranormal twist—that will leave readers anxiously awaiting its sequel.

 Review:

Coincidence? I THINK NOT!

Mafi has created the single most coincidence-driven plot line I've ever read. 

Adam coincidentally goes to the same grade school as Juliette. They coincidentally both liked each other but never had the guts to confess. They both coincidentally have the world's crappiest parents. Adam coincidentally finds out that Juliette is held prisoner at the asylum after years of separation. Juliette coincidentally doesn't recognize Adam at first, even though later she explicitly says she could never forget his gorgeous eyes. Coincidentally, Adam is the only one who can touch Juliette without kicking the bucket. Warner also can touch Juliette without dying...COINCIDENTALLY! Kenji coincidentally finds them both after they run away. Kenji coincidentally happens to have superpowers and that's how he found them after they ran away. Juliette coincidentally happens to have ANOTHER superpower that comes in handy while rescuing Adam. EveryoneFifty two people at Omega-Whatever-It's-Called coincidentally have superpowers as well. Mafi coincidentally overuses the slash feature on Microsoft Word. 

But hey, if that's how she likes to write her books...moving on. 

I just really didn't like this book. At first it was the prose. There are a lot of metaphors and similes and analogies and, in general, a lot of literary devices. Half the time, I had to stop and reread the sentence just to figure out what Mafi was referring to. But I got over it. I actually started to warm to the author's style of writing; it's pretty, once you get used to it. However, the issues I had with Juliette and Adam never really faded. I started hating Juliette right away because she just is so negative. She has the mentality of Edgar Allen Poe without the sprinkling of poetic genius. Constantly, Juliette holds these internal monologues with herself about how craptastic her life is/was before she got sent to prison by her own parents. Then, she meets Adam, the only other person in the world who can match her for the sheer amounts of emo screen time. Since we don't get to read Adam's POV firsthand, Mafi generously let us HEAR his thoughts ALOUD in horribly dramatic love confessions to Juliette. Together, their conversations together went something like this. 

"Remember when you gave your pudding cup to that girl in fifth grade?" Adam asked. "That's when I fell in love with you for the first time! And it just hurt my soul so much because you represented the only thing that's good with this world!"
Juliette blushed (because she does that a lot) and touched Adam's cheek; their connection filled her heart with warmth rivaling the sun!
"Juliette," Adam whispered. "You complete me."
Juliette started weeping. "You had me at pudding cup!"

By the time Adam and Juliette manage to escape Warner and his cronies, I had lost all sensation in my head. This story numbs your brain because you're forced to deal with the farfetched situations Mafi sets up for her little characters while simultaneously wading through five soap-worthy confessions a chapter. It barely registered on my "plot twist" meter that the big underdog resistance movement is filled with X-Men. I knew that part of the online summary had to play in somewhere...I just wasn't expecting it to be after chapter 50.

Don't read this. I don't recommend it.

P.S. I have nothing against Jerry Maguire!

Review: Angel Evolution (sorry this is a little late)

Title: Angel Evolution

Author: David Estes

Rating: 2.5 stars out of 5

Part of a Series?: First in series

Goodreads Summary:

 Angel Evolution- the first book in the young adult fantasy trilogy: The Evolution Trilogy... When Taylor meets Gabriel at college, she is in awe of the subtle glow that surrounds him. No one else, not even her best friend, seems to notice. Something about him scares her. Is all as it appears? While Taylor struggles for answers, she finds herself in the middle of a century old war centered on one miraculous revelation: evolution.

Review:

Thanks goes out to David Estes for letting me have a free ebook copy of his book to review. :) 

2.5 stars 

The last self-pubbed book I read was Betrayal by Mayandree Michel. Long story short, it sucked. Thankfully, Angel Evolution was better than I expected coming away from my prior experience with self-pubs; however, there were a lot of things that could have been improved.

The best way I can describe the faults of Angel Evolution is that the story itself reads a lot like fanfiction. Now before you make any judgments about this statement, consider this: fanfiction.nethas thousands and thousands of stories in its catalogue, with more submitted every day. Obviously, there is something addictive about fanfiction, not just because it spins a take on your favorite stories but also because its just interesting. There are some really good undiscovered writers out there hiding behind online pen names. However, generally, the stories online have a relative entertainment value but, if bound into a hardcover and put into a bookstore, wouldn't cut it among professionally published works.  

The same goes for Estes and Angel Evolution. There is a certain amount of mystery and drama that I enjoyed to the plot, but overall, the story read like a fanfiction. There were a lot of "show don't tell" violations in the form of infodumps and internal expositions. I thought that the book lacked a naturalness that is usually found in published books. There were a lot of strange phrases and stiff, awkward dialogues (note: I personally like contractions. Even in non-dialogue sentences, they make the narration smoother) that don't match up with my idea of a group of laid back college folk. Events also happened way to quickly. Estes uses a lot of jumps in narration and time, which really cut into our ability to relate fully to a character. The two month jump in the middle of Taylor and Gabriel's relationship startled me, and as a result, I was unable to feel the chemistry between the two--all of the sudden, they went from the new couple stage to the able-to-say-I-love-you stage. I wished I could have experienced the bonding phase between the protagonists. It would've really helped me relate to the otherwise unrelatable protagonists.

I do not profess to know anything about the jobs of professional book editors and publishers, but they're paid to fix these kinds of errors. Again, I can't blame this book or Estes himself for self-pubbing (since this is a good way to just get your work out to the public), but a lot of the faults to this book simply stem from a lack of experience reviewing the initial drafts.

Not everything about this book was bad. I thought that there was something enticing about the angel-demon war. Estes put his own unique spin on the two races, and I really want to know more about the backstory behind the conflict and those involved. What was interesting to me was that neither side really seemed to be truly evil. As a demon, Chris definitely made a good case for being the good guy. But then again, Gabriel and his fellow angels had this light-hearted nature to them. I think Estes did a great job at blurring the lines between the friends and enemies. 

Review: The Faerie Ring

Title: The Faerie Ring

Author: Kiki Hamilton

Rating: 2.5 stars out of 5 

Part of a Series?: First in series

Goodreads Summary:

Debut novelist Kiki Hamilton takes readers from the gritty slums and glittering ballrooms of Victorian London to the beguiling but menacing Otherworld of the Fey in this spellbinding tale of romance, suspense, and danger. 


The year is 1871, and Tiki has been making a home for herself and her family of orphans in a deserted hideaway adjoining Charing Cross Station in central London. Their only means of survival is by picking pockets. One December night, Tiki steals a ring, and sets off a chain of events that could lead to all-out war with the Fey. For the ring belongs to Queen Victoria, and it binds the rulers of England and the realm of Faerie to peace. With the ring missing, a rebel group of faeries hopes to break the treaty with dark magic and blood—Tiki’s blood.

Unbeknownst to Tiki, she is being watched—and protected—by Rieker, a fellow thief who suspects she is involved in the disappearance of the ring. Rieker has secrets of his own, and Tiki is not all that she appears to be. Her very existence haunts Prince Leopold, the Queen’s son, who is driven to know more about the mysterious mark that encircles her wrist.
Prince, pauper, and thief—all must work together to secure the treaty

 

Review: 

2.5 stars

I feel like I might be a just a little harsh in reviewing this book. But when a book like The Faerie Ring takes itself as seriously as it does, I like it when my historical fiction actually feels like historical fiction. I admit that the description of London in this book is fairly impressive, but the way the characters speak, think, act, etc., you wouldn't know they live in Victorian England. Everything remotely interesting about that period in time has been watered down by the author to satiate the blind tastes of the masses. As a history buff, I was incredibly disappointed. 

First of all, I really, really don't like Kiki. I didn't like her from page one when I realized the author was self projecting herself into Kiki's character. When authors do that (e.g. Stephanie Meyer), the characters end up a mess--in other words, they end up trying to hard to be likeable. Take Kiki--I MEAN Tiki's character. Tiki is the maternal figure to her family of street urchins in Victorian London. She has this darn tragic past, and now she struggles to make a living because she has to sacrifice her day's pickings to get money for Clara. She's actually beautiful and intelligent despite her situation, and she's loyal to the bone. Gosh, she's just so perfect. She's a model citizen. And I want to facepalm. It's just this lack of any personality flaws that makes a nerve pop in my forehead. And yet, despite being so intelligent, Tiki is just so stupid sometimes. She doesn't believe Rieker could actually be helpful. It takes her more than half the book to even believe that he's not trying to scam her, let alone allow him to help her. Even when Rieker protects her TWICE from vicious faeries, Tiki doesn't even thank him. So let me revise my previous statement. Tiki is so perfect except for the fact that her judgment is crap. 

My second main disappointment with this book is the mixture of supernatural aspects into the story line. Actually, I wish that The Faerie Ring was just The Ring. For the first time ever, I wish that this was just a historical fiction story...not a historical fantasy. The concept of the faerie truce was cheap and weakly written. We mostly learn from it via Rieker's info dumps and a few scenes in the later half of the story. The faeries are not a major or necessary part to the story. I have this fantasy about what the book could have been if it was just a crime-heist-mixed-with-Victorian-England--think 19th century Oceans Eleven. But alas, Hamilton has failed my expectations. 

This could've been a great book. Maybe if Hamilton hadn't tried so hard...oh well.

--

Follow:

Goodreads

Twitter

Review: Touch the Dark

Title:  Touch the Dark

Author: Karen Chance

Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

Part of a Series?: First in series

Goodreads Summary:

Like any sensible girl, Cassie tries to avoid vampires. But when the bloodsucking Mafioso she escaped three years ago finds Cassie again with revenge in mind, she's forced to turn to the vampire Senate for protection.The undead senators won't help her for nothing, and Cassie finds herself working with one of their most powerful members, a dangerously seductive master vampire- and the price he demands may be more than Cassie is willing to pay.
 

Review:

I think there is a great story in this book...somewhere. Hidden. Deep. Really deep. Written in Pig Latin. Backwards. And upside down. Because at times, I thought I could glimpse the brilliant glow of something that could've been really, really addictive. But mostly, I was just lost and frustrated the entire time. 

Touch the Dark doesn't do much justice for paranormal fantasy, vampires, or clairvoyants (although all three groups have gotten their fair share of literary attention, IMO). It's page after page of clichés. Cassandra is the female, lone spirit clairvoyant who can occasionally skip back in time through her visions. Throughout the story, you also get to know of her tragic, dead-parent past and all of her sexy man-vampires in her life. 

For one, this book is the definition of an infodump. I've never ever read anything in my entire life that infodumps like this. And part of my frustration about being lead to believe that there is that glow of literary brilliance somewhere within the pages of the book stems from the jarring infodump pages that cut off any interesting scene. [ For example, let's place Cassandra and co. in a battle against a series of black war mages. Our protagonist is in a life-threatening situation, surrounded by enemies and on the hit list of every bad guy union in Las Vegas. Cassie's group's only shield is about to fail them when--Hey, did you know how war mages draw their shields? They simply have to imagine the shield out of anything they find protective. For the enemy mage, he imagines a wall of trees protecting himself (LOL). Pitkin's wall is water based. Cassie's is fire. Also, did you know that were-animals can apparently speak like humans even though they are transformed. Or maybe that ability is only available to half-were, half-satyr. Satyrs are half-goat men who have a ridiculous sex drive and equally ridiculous ego. But hey, that's all useless information that you really couldn't care about. Now...where were we in the actual story? Something about a shield...

Also, I just got tired of the general lack of interest I had for the characters. Cassie is such a standard mess. I don't even care about her, really. In all honesty, she doesn't have any exceptional personality trait that shouts "PAY ATTENTION" to me. She's rebellious, but what kind of PNR protagonist isn't these days? She's non-human, but well...okay, that's great. She has a flock of hot men at her beck and call. Do you get what I'm saying? And as for said hot men, they're alright. I think Chance needs to cool it with the long hair though. I find men with hair longer than their shoulders to be disgusting. I'm sorry, but this isn't the 70s. Men's hair should not be longer than mine. Specifically, Mircea and Tomas. They need haircuts. Also, they need personality upgrades to match with Cassie's. Everyone is so blah. Even the man candy stereotypes didn't really interest me. They were so predictable: aloof vampires with a soft spot for the local psychic. [And on a personal note, I think Tomas' betrayal at the end of the book was a total jump-the-shark moment for Chance. It was not something I thought Tomas' character would ever do realistically.

--

Follow me:

Goodreads

Twitter 

Review: The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer

Title: The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer

Author: Michelle Hodkin

Rating: 2.5/5 stars 

Part of a series?: First in series

Goodreads Summary: 
Mara Dyer doesn't think life can get any stranger than waking up in a hospital with no memory of how she got there.

It can.

She believes there must be more to the accident she can't remember that killed her friends and left her mysteriously unharmed.

There is.

She doesn't believe that after everything she's been through, she can fall in love.

She's wrong.

Review:

 

2.5 stars

There's this new T.V. show airing that's getting critical acclaim right now. It's called Homeland (I believe it's airing on Showtime). It's part suspense, part thriller, part awesome (I saw the pilot--really good, although I haven't had time to continue with the series). The gist of the show is that an CIA agent gets a tip from one of her sources that an American POW in Iraq has been "turned" into an enemy against the U.S. by Al-Qaeda. At first she doesn't believe her source because she had no idea there were any living POW in Iraq. But a few months later, a recon mission turns up an army sniper who has survived imprisonment by Al-Qaeda for a year(s). The man is welcomed back into America as a hero and icon for the War of Terror. Now you might wonder why I'm starting this review off by telling you about this show. Well first off, the T.V. is great because you don't know if the agent is right or wrong about her instincts when, over the course of each episode, she pops MANY anti-psychotic pills that she hides in her vitamins. So is the agent crazy or is the sniper really plotting an attack on American soil?

The thing about Homeland is that it's perfect for T.V. Suspense + Live Action = Great Show. And I felt like The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer could've been like Homeland. For most of the book, you have to wonder if Mara is actually off her rocker or actually seeing things. But unfortunately, that's about as far as my praise can go...

The book jumps between bipolar schizophrenia and true-blue-paranormal-blah. As much as I tried to enjoy the confusion-causing "mystery," I couldn't decide if this book was supposed to be a paranormal, bump-in-the-night story or simply a tragic tale of a girl gone crazy over killing her friends. What made this conundrum even worse was the half-hearted explanation we get at the very end. Now, I know what "mara" means because of Rachel Vincent's Soul Screamer series, and I had a feeling that her name would have some sort of connection to what was happening to her. But only because I knew what a mara was did I understand why Mara happens to kill things when she gets emotional. The thing about a paranormal book is that you know for sure that the person with the powers probably isn't 100% human. I suppose the fact that Mara didn't even broach the topic of her humanity could be a sign that Hodkin was trying to keep things as realistic as possible...but nahhhh...I'm reluctant to give Hodkin the benefit of the doubt.

As for Mara's hottie boyfriend, this is where the story goes from "Um. Okay. Great. I'm lost." to "Zzzzz...wait. He has magic?". Noah is so cookie-cutter, I want to gag. He's super rich, flirty, hot, multi-lingual, intelligent, alpha-male-ish, etc. The cherry on top is that he's had sex with probably every girl in school, used them for a week or two, and then threw them away like "used condoms." But Mara has to be the one girl he decides he's really in love with. That itself was a sketchy, facepalm move on Hodkin's part. Why can't authors get some originality??? But then...there was this one scene were I literally LOL-ed.

Remember that scene in Harry Potter 7.1 where Ron comes back to Harry and Hermione after leaving them. He tells them that he found their campsite because the Deluminator's glowing light orb called out to him in Hermione's voice then entered into his chest, telling him where to go. Hilarious! And so in this scene, Noah confesses that HE TOO HAS POWERS! He has visions of people dying and can heal the wounded. And he had a vision where he heard Mara's voice before he ever knew she existed. And when Mara came to school, he heard her and had to chase her down because Mara just called to him in his soul! Okay well the last part about the soul was a half-lie, but you get how cheesy the whole thing was.

I was feeling very...allusiony today. So anyway, the book was just bizarre. Mara's powers get little to no explanation aside from that she kills people when she PMSes, and Noah apparently isn't too Gary Stu either because he can heal people...yay. I'm disappointed because the cover was so gorgeous...

--

Follow:

Goodreads

Twitter