You know you're in deep crap when there are red flags on the back friggin' cover telling you that this book is going to be terrible. Strike 1: Somebody called this book a mix between Stephen King and Stephanie Meyer. Uh oh. Strike 2: Awful writing excerpt on the back cover trying to sound more artsy than it really is. Ugh! Strike 3: Getting three pages...three pages...into this thing only to discover it is in the first person perspective of an unholy annoying character who loves to whine. SOMEBODY SAVE ME!
Premise: Zara White is sad because she recently lost her stepfather to an unexpected heart attack. Naturally, this prompts her mother to send her away to live with her grandmother until she feels better. She instantly falls for the first hot guy she lays eyes on, is immediately overwhelmed by everybody in this small town wanting to be her BFF, and yet she still finds stuff to complain about. But something is amiss in this small, Maine town as boys go missing and Zara falls upon an ancient conflict going on between weres and pixies (you heard me) and she, naturally, gets thrown into the mix of all of this.
Is this starting to sound the tiniest bit familiar to anyone? How about I throw in the fact that these pixies are human sized, beautiful creatures that leave behind sparkling dust and and drink blood. Yeah. These are the freaking Twilight vampires all over again! Not to mention that they're fighting against werewolves! And I don't care if there are also werebears and weretigers and wereeagles, IT'S THE SAME GOSH DARN THING! To the letter this is the exact same story as that one and it gets to the point where I think that Meyer woman needs to sue this chick!
Oh, and I'm not afraid to say that Zara has to be the. worst. character. I've. EVER. read. Every single thing this girl says or does makes me want to strangle her. She's big into Amnesty International and stuff like that, and that's fine and all, except she's the type of person to preach about it. As in if anyone doesn't agree with her, she judges you. Oh, and she deals with all this paranormal stuff by "being sarcastic". Except what she does is NOT sarcasm!!! I know sarcasm. I grew up with sarcasm and you, my good woman, SUCK AT SARCASM! It's not humorous. It does nothing to lighten the tone. You're! Just! Rude! Oh, and get used to her complaining about Maine. Because every single gosh darn word out of this broad's mouth is either failed sarcasm or complaining about Maine. It's ALL she does! There is no reason that everybody, freakin' EVERYBODY, loves this girl and wants her for whatever reason. There's nothing to love at all! Not even Amnesty International can this stupid, insipid, annoying brat likable.
On top of that, this book is just horribly written. Nobody, not even the normal humans, acts like a normal human. Zara's schtick is that she's able to perfectly recite the scientific names of all phobias when she's nervous. Outside of this being a cheap gimmick, it contributes nothing about her character and is just an attempt to try and make her seem smart when she's not. Also, the stereotypes practically walk up to you and introduce themselves as they come. "Hi, my name is Ian and I"ll be your third wheel for the story." "Hello there. My name is Meghan and I'll be your mean girl for this afternoon." "Greetings, friend! I'm Issie and I'm your quirky best friend that you've just met right now and will refuse to go away!" "Hello, my name is Nick and I'll be your hunky, perfect, overly protective and sometimes physically abusive boyfriend who has no personality except for being inexplicably in love with you and who you only like for my body." And it's not just the characters. Everything is so predictable that it makes the story painfully boring! The foreshadowing is so heavy-handed that nothing comes as a surprise. "I've never known my real father and for some reason this pixie king wants to kidnap me." Gee, I WONDER what that could mean?!?! "Wow, Nick is so big and strong and physically fit and so protective of everybody and everything. Not at all like these strange, shapeshifters whose duty it is to protect all of humanity from the evil pixies. There's clearly NO correlation between those two things." See, Zara? THAT IS SARCASM!
And while I'm at it, this thing just refuses...to...stop!!! Near the end there are four times, four times, that this piece of crap could have ended but it just kept going! Just needlessly going on and on and on until loose ends that you don't even care about are tied up. I can't believe this thing has a sequel (which I will NOT be reading) when they left NOTHING unsaid. Oh, and let me just take a quick second to go over this ending, okay? And I'm not bothering to put up a Spoiler Warning this time. The more people who read this and get the book spoiled for them so they never read it will be a blessing unto mankind! So this pixie king is in control of his and his people's need to drink blood so long as he has a queen with him. There are about a thousand ways this can be solved peacefully and put a stop to any fuss, and there's proof in that fact when Zara's mother was able to solve this problem peacefully several years ago. So, how does Zara handle this situation? By trapping all the pixies in the same building so they can't escape and they have no outlet for their hunger so they'll turn on and kill each other. Yeah, our peace-loving, world saving, Amnesty International protagonist solves the problem WITH GENOCIDE! Congratulations! You've committed one of the worst crimes possible against a race that is unable to control their nature just because their nature didn't agree with you. You suck, Zara! You suck!
Final Verdict
I don't know if you really got this but I hated this book! Hated, hated, hated this book! Hated every single stupid, simpering, poorly written word of it! And this isn't like a movie where you just waste a couple of hours on it. I wasted hours and hours and hours of my life that I'll never get back ever because of this horrible, awful, disgusting thing! It's so bad, I'm not even going to throw it in the Waste Bin of Despair. No, this thing is going straight into the FURNACE OF EVERLASTING TORMENT! Don't buy it. Don't read it. Keep away from this book if it's the last book you'll ever read!
Have you read the book? How did you survive? Comment below and share your thoughts.
Next time: Let us end this month of Halloween by doing something a little different. Instead of a critique, I'm going to do an appreciation of the book series that got me interested in reading scary stories in the first place.
No comments:
Post a Comment