Publisher: Harlequin Teen (Kimani)
Publication date:ISBN: 9780373831968
Source: ARC provided by publicist
Krystal thought she was just a normal teen, albeit one with a strange talent. Now, she's being haunted by ghosts only she can hear and talk to - specifically, Ricky Watson, a cute but dead boy who wants her help. But, she really would rather not deal with his problems, when she has so many of her own, not the least of which is her parents' split. It becomes even more difficult to ignore him when she meets more people like her with special powers. And when they stumble across a much bigger problem.
Things I Liked:
I liked how the story progressed. There seemed at first to be too many storylines going on at once, but then they all drew together into one. As the book went on, I started to like Krystal more as well. She bothered me a lot initially, but as she changed over the course of the story, I began to care what happened to her. It has lovely diverse characters, which is refreshing in the paranormally oversaturated genre - African American and part Native American. The story itself also got more interesting and had more depth than I initially thought, especially when she finally gets to chat with her father and work things out with her mother. I was actually quite surprised by the creepy mystery element, since I definitely did not expect a ghost story of this kind. I was forced to change my initial impressions of the book pretty much all around. Though I figured out who was the villain pretty early, I was still invested enough to finish the story. Fun start to a new series!
Things I Didn't Like:
As I stated above, I was not interested and did not really enjoy the first part of the book. I kept putting it down and forgetting about it for a while. I'm glad I picked it up again. I also think I struggled with the way characters speak not being very familiar to me (I'm a mountain west girl and not east coast). I got over it and just enjoyed the story, though.
Read-alikes:
Reminded me of The Summoning by Kelley Armstrong
The Midnighters series by Scott Westerfeld
Also a little like Gone by Michael Grant
BOOK CONTENT RATINGS:
s-factor: !@
some, not a whole lot
mrg-factor: XX
there were some elements of the story about it
v-factor: ->->
some violent encounters are discussed but not described
Overall rating: ***.5 I don't usually give half stars, but it works here
Are you ever surprised to like something in a genre you don't usually enjoy?
If you buy through my Amazon linkage, I will get a very small percentage
Posts
It's not exactly a genre I don't enjoy, because it's still Fantasy, but I found Catherynne Valente's "Palimpsest" very hard to get into. I really had to force myself to persevere with the book--but it did come together in the final third and I felt that, overall, I had enjoyed the story. It's very different: definitely not everyone's cup of tea but interesting, imho ...
ReplyDeleteSounds like Ghost and Goth from a girl's perspective. I enjoyed that one, so I imagine this will be good as well.
ReplyDeleteAndie, I'm always happy when I don't like a book at first, but come to enjoy it eventually.
ReplyDeleteAlison, I really didn't like the cover of Ghost and Goth, so I kind of avoided it (how shallow). Maybe I'll pick it up eventually...