Series: Book of Red #1
Author: Krystal Wade
Release date: March 3, 2014
Publisher: Curiosity Quills
Genres: fantasy, romance, magic
Goodreads, Amazon, Book Depository, abebooks, Barnes & Noble
After being kidnapped, hogtied, and stuffed in the trunk of a car, seventeen-year-old Abigail Nichols' boy problems seem unimportant.
She couldn't be more wrong.
The boy who saves her holds her heart.
But Derick Crawford also holds secrets.
Magical beings who guide human emotions are fighting an invisible war dating back to the dawn of time, and Abigail's one of them. The more she learns of her heritage, the less she wants to know. Armed with a very old, very massive book to teach them about their history, Abigail and Derick run away to a place where they think they can be safe and happy, only to have their troubles secretly hitch a ride.
Her history book is in a sharing mood, and it tells her to keep a secret of her own.
But has she put her trust in the wrong place?
And will the world survive if she has?
Review: Received a copy of Shattered Secrets from Netgalley. Thank you!
Reading this was more of a struggle than I'd like to admit. At the same time that I was really interested, the writing style annoyed me. I believe it's in serious need of a good editor. Or just more complete thoughts. Trying to explain my feelings about the book without spoiling or summarizing the plot is going to be incredibly tricky but I'm going to attempt.
If this book had a stricter timeline/string of events it'd be a lot better. We take two teenagers that are in love and give them magical powers. I'm following. But one gets kidnapped and then told she's adopted. Alright, I guess I'm still following. Then it turns out that not only these two have powers, but the boy's parents, the girl's biological parents and a set of their neighbors/friends have powers as well. Everyone but the girl and boy knew about the powers before the start of the story.
I want to know why. Why was only one teenager trusted with this information? And if he was so desperate to get involved with Abby, why didn't he tell her the truth ahead of time? It's just so he'd look like the bad love interest. Why include a love triangle if the choice is already being made and/or obvious? I don't get it.
Abby by now is reasonably freaked out, annoyed and having a mental tirade over wanting to just be normal. (Never heard that before). Derick's parents keep telling her she isn't normal and basically needs to get over it. The boy plans an escape but his parents help him and the girl is both relieved and (still) freaked out to be with the boy. She constantly goes back and forth between being okay and not okay. It's very inconsistent and agitating.
I halfway feel the romance between the main characters Abby and Derick. Where they've known each other for years and have liked each other a majority of that time, it falls flat. I understand where both of them are coming from but there's not a lot of chemistry, we're told they love each other but not really shown it. We get shining eyes and hand holding but then they argue and hold back important information from each other. They're both thrown into this mess that they don't understand or like but they make stupid decisions that put each other in danger when they're specifically told not to. They're 17 and 18 respectively, she's already been kidnapped and had her life threatened but she still storms off alone almost every chance she gets. I get they're teenagers and teenagers are pretty dumb but even they should know when their lives are on the line.
The magical elements in the book are really interesting but they don't mesh well. A parallel world that consists of two groups of people that are against one another and fight for dominance in our world. (Or are there two parallel worlds? I'm not clear on the whole situation). There are safe zones that allow temporary safety. The way the magical people communicate is through a RPG video game for some reason. That has to be my biggest problem, why introduce something like a video game used for communication and not elaborate? All we get is huffy "Games are for super nerds" from the main character. (Perhaps I take personal offense to this).
* Note: most of the above was written before being marked as DNF. It's possible that some things I mentioned get better but I couldn't bring myself to care and on top of that, was pushed into a minor reading slump.
Stopped reading when I got to this:
"So why aren't you happy?" she asked, taking his bait.Why on EARTH are you trusting a magical book you received not even a week ago over a boy you've known your whole life? Never mind, don't tell me. I don't care.
Because this book keeps asking me to lie.
Rating: 2 stars/DNF
No comments:
Post a Comment