To break down what
parts I liked and dislike:
First two chapters:
liked
Next fifty chapters:
blah
Last seven chapters:
loved
So, out of fifty-nine
chapters, I only liked nine of them. Doesn’t sound real good, does it? Well,
let me explain.
The beginning, I really
liked how present Mara’s voice is, and what happened in the first two chapters.
Having ‘fun’ with friends, and then what happened months later. But Mara’s
voice didn’t appeal to me after a while. Too much of ‘blah blah blah’ and not
enough of what was going on. It was at
the end that I really started liking the writing, due to the fact that
something actually happened.
And, being the Grammar
Nazi/writer, my opinions on a few of the grammar bother me. Like all caps with
someone’s yelling. This is a place that calls for italics. At least, that’s what I’ve been taught. This appears much
more professional in my opinion. And then there were quite a few places where I
found run-on sentences (which I tend to write myself) and lack of proper
dialogue formatting. There were a few times where I felt like writing in my
book, which I never have done nor what to ever do.
There were a lot of
things that annoyed/confused me. The
first little annoyance was the love interest: Noah. He is a British boy who
doesn’t really play by the rules. He is rich, and he can speak two other
languages fluently. He carried around thousands of dollars at one point. And
he’s beautiful. Many times, the word beautiful was used to describe little aspects of Noah, which got
real annoying. Then he acts like a real jerk at some points. Oh, and Mara has
to hate him for some reason. AND she thinks she’s the slut when she starts
dating him. That utterly confused me, being that sluts are thought to be girls
who go out with multitudes of guys, instead of one. Unless I and hundreds of
other teens at my school are wrong.
Another thing was plot
holes. Or what appeared to be plot holes. There were many times where I had no
clue how much time had passed, and then points where I was pretty sure that it
was one time, only to find out it was another time. That irked me a lot. Time consistency was not
real present.
There were quite a few
predictable places. Like when Mara envisions a person’s death. After the first
one, I could predict that the next death would happen. The only thing that took
me by surprise was one little fact toward the end of the story. Not the huge
one at the very end of the story, but a chapter or two before that. I was
rarely surprised by anything which
bothered me. I want to be taken by surprise, rather than know what happens
next. (I guess I could come up with an excuse for this, but I’m not too sure
it’d be reasonable.)
At the beginning of the
story, I liked a lot of characters. By the end, I only liked two: Jamie and
Joseph. Mara’s brother got annoying halfway through the story with the rude
things he said to Mara. Mara was annoying for being so idiotic when it came to
so many things. Noah got real rude too, but I started to warm up to his sweetness
toward the end. Mara, though, still annoyed me. I might check out the next book
just because of Noah.
Then there’s the mean
girl that comes with every private school. I have friends in private schools,
and I’m pretty sure they don’t have the classic high school movie’s mean girl
clique. But that’s what Anna is. I hate
this stereotype, especially since I’ve grown up in one of those places where
one would think that this stereotype would be present, and it isn’t.
Now, the beginning of
the story was all info. No plot—at least, not really. Not until the last few
chapters where things picked up. I guess it was good to actually ‘build’ Noah
and Mara’s relationship (which still wasn’t too good at the beginning), but it
was otherwise blah. The most character changes were in the last chapters, which
were the few good ones.
What I’d tell me to do
is read the first two chapters, maybe ask me about the middle part about how
Noah and Mara get closer, Mara thinks she’s insane, and … that’s really it.
Well, after that, then read chapter 52 on, because that’s how much of the story
seemed really necessary. If this were to be just a contemporary
mystery/romance, I’d say the story was good. But because this has a paranormal
aspect, it goes down in my opinion.
To tell you the truth,
something compelled me to keep reading after the first 100 pages, and I’m kind
of glad. The good part of the story was at the end, and I really enjoyed it.
Overall, I’d recommend
this, but warn readers (depending on what genre they like) about the middle
section. It bothered me, and I’m pretty sure you could skip that section after
receiving a brief summary (if that’s even necessary) and still understand the
last bit of the story.
The fact that this
somehow kept me reading probably makes me want to give it 3 out of 5. Some
characters were good/okay, the good ideas were hidden between the bad, and the
end of the story really hooked me.
