Review: Dating the Devil by Lia Romeo

Title: Dating the Devil

Author: Lia Romeo

Series: N/A

Genre: Paranormal Romance

Summary (from Goodreads)

Lucy O Neill is a plain-Jane New York PR assistant with a tiny apartment, a dead-end job, and a pair of annoyingly perfect roommates. Nothing exciting ever happens to her, until one night at a neighborhood pub . . .

Lewis Mephisto is tall, handsome, and hot. Very hot. He meets her gaze through the crowd, a wicked grin on his lips, an irresistible invitation in his eyes.

He’s Mr. Right Times Ten. Sophisticated, wealthy, sexy, and completely devoted to her, body and soul. So what’s her problem?

Can she handle dating the Devil?

Review

This is one of those cheesy, predictable books where the characters rarely show signs of having more than two dimensions, the plot never throws up any surprises and just occasionally you find yourself skimming a scene because it’s just so cringy.

But it’s also one of those books that makes up for all that by being just good fun.

There’s very little here that you won’t have seen a hundred times before. Even the interesting concept of the Devil and whether or not he is evil is brushed over in favour of steamy scenes in hallways and lifts and offices and just about everywhere else. Background characters have problems you can guess long before Lucy figures them out and the whole thing in general is as familiar and comfortable as driving home.

But for a light bit of fluff it achieves everything it sets out to. Charming, attractive lead male, hapless, underconfident lead female, lots of fairytale princess scenes, emotional highs and lows, and a feel-good funny ending to leave you with a smile on your face. A perfect bit of summer beach reading.

Rating: 3/5

Review: The Fallen Star by Jessica Sorensen

Title: The Fallen Star

Author: Jessica Sorensen

Series: Fallen Star #1

Genre: YA Paranormal

Summary (from Goodreads)

For eighteen year-old Gemma, life has never been normal. Up until recently, she has been incapable of feeling emotion. And when she’s around Alex, the gorgeous new guy at school, she can feel electricity that makes her skin buzz. Not to mention the monsters that haunt her nightmares have crossed over into real-life. But with Alex seeming to hate her and secrets popping up everywhere, Gemma’s life is turning into a chaotic mess. Things that shouldn’t be real suddenly seem to exist. And as her world falls apart, figuring out the secrets of her past becomes a matter of life and death.

Review

I should have known this was a bad idea from the length of the book on my Kindle homepage. It was more than twice as long as all my other YA books, which either indicated an epic adventure with lots of different characters and plot threads cleverly interwoven, or that it would be a bloated mess. From the synopsis I suspected the latter, and I wasn’t wrong.

If you could call the wandering mess of a storyline a plot, then it started emerging maybe around chapter five or six? Prior to that was pages of needless whining from Gemma about her sucky life, school lessons, homework – the only mildly interesting thing being the introduction of potential love interest Alex.

Who despite being a complete and utter twat, is so dreamy and good looking, magically making electric sparks course through Gemma’s body, that she falls for him instantly – her head emptying of all thoughts. Well. There weren’t many thoughts going on in there anyway.

As main characters go, Gemma is about as vapid and stupid as they come. At one point, she overhears her guardians and Alex talking about Alex being sent to get close to her so they can learn her secrets. And she still questions what the hell is going on. Sorry, I should say ‘heck.’ What the heck is going on. ARGH. This probably won’t bother other people as much as it did me, but seriously, heck???? My nan says heck. If it was a little quirk of Gemma’s that she didn’t like to swear, I could buy it, but all the characters say heck, and it’s just ridiculous.

So, Gemma is wilfully ignorant, crazy about the hot, controlling, abusive idiot that just happens to make her feel all fuzzy and electrified aannd… not much else. If she had any character traits they weren’t consistently delivered or explored. The sum total of her defining features is her violet eyes (cliche, right there) and her utter lack of any gumption or braincells.

There are some interesting ideas – Gemma never experienced any emotions until very recently, paranormal creatures existing, Keepers, Foreseers etc, but it’s all handled so haphazardly, it just becomes confusing. Gemma never felt anything before, and yet she never stops to be confused about the new emotions she experiences – she just recognises them magically. Magical creatures and other worldbuilding things are thrown in as they becomes pertinent to the plot, leaving you just bewildered as to what is going to happen next.

In fact, the whole thing is just poorly executed, and even more poorly edited. There was a comma splice in the first sentence for God’s sake… Grammatical errors, spelling errors, the completely wrong word being used (rouse instead of ruse for one example) were frequent occurrences, along with flat out clumsy writing – repeating the same word three times in two sentences, cliched dialogue and spell-it-out-because-the-reader-is-cleary-too-thick-to-understand phrases, all hyphenated, just like that.

And then you have the flat out contradictions – like Alex giving Gemma a hard time for talking to someone who just started talking to her randomly, saying that she shouldn’t have answered, and should have just walked away, then two sentences later saying it was okay for him to be talking to some random because it’s impolite not to answer when someone starts speaking to you.

Er… wut?

I can forgive the occasional mistake, especially in Self Published books – it’s so much harder for indie authors to finance and access the best editors, and we all make mistakes. I make them frequently. But there was confusion between ‘there, their and they’re’ are some points, and I just think any semi-literate friend ought to be able to spot that sort of stuff.

This is the sort of Self Published book that perpetuates the idea that all indie books are terribly written, rejected by agents and publishers for a reason, shouldn’t be touched with a ten foot bargepole. And it’s a real shame, especially when this is getting 5 star ratings by the hundreds and there are decent books out there getting no attention.

I’m just glad it was free. If I’d spent money on this, I think I would be baying for blood right now.

Rating: 1/5

Review: Fade to Black by Francis Knight

Title: Fade to Black

Author: Francis Knight

Series: Rojan Dizon #1

Genre: Dark Fantasy

Summary (from Goodreads)

It’s a city built upwards, not across—where streets are built upon streets, buildings upon buildings. A city that the Ministry rules from the sunlit summit, and where the forsaken lurk in the darkness of Under.

Rojan Dizon doesn’t mind staying in the shadows, because he’s got things to hide. Things like being a pain-mage, with the forbidden power to draw magic from pain. But he can’t hide for ever.

Because when Rojan stumbles upon the secrets lurking in the depths of the Pit, the fate of Mahala will depend on him using his magic. And unlucky for Rojan—this is going to hurt.

Review

So, the Orbit marketing team did a really good job of getting this blasted all over my twitter and Facebook and making me fall in serious cover lust. It’s just such a striking image – I love it – and reading the blurb only made me more interested. I was pleased that the story lived up to the promise.

The great strength of the story is the world. Mahala is an entirely believable place, horrific in its details, and Knight throws you in at the deep end – quite literally – starting the story in the dingy squalor of the lower levels of the city. It’s a world that only ever gets second hand light, bounced off mirrors (if that) and the darkness hides evil deeds done by those from the Heights. The city is like one big metaphor for the rich – again quite literally – sh*tting on the poor. But it manages to be so without being overly preachy.

The characters are great, with Rojan shining as the narrator. He’s a cowardly, chauvinistic opportunist, but you can’t help but like him, even before he starts stepping up to the plate of the challenges he’s facing. Other, more minor, characters are just as good, from warrior Jake to unlikely hero Pasha, and there’s plenty of damage to go round to add interesting layers and motivations.

Because this isn’t just ‘dark’ fantasy in the literal ‘it’s a dark place’ sense. Fade to Black deals with some challenging themes, and doesn’t shy away from gore and violence. Which, personally, I like in a book – because it’s always satisfying to see these empires of evil toppled by a plucky hero in a way that would likely never happen in the real world.

All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed this. It’s one that will lurk with you for a while – for all it reads like a fast paced adventure story with no real depth, there are as many layers to the story as there are to the city of Mahala.

Rating: 5/5

Review: Between Two Thorns by Emma Newman

Title: Between Two Thorns

Author: Emma Newman

Series: The Split Worlds #1

Genre: Fantasy

Received for review from NetGalley

Summary (from Goodreads)

Something is wrong in Aquae Sulis, Bath’s secret mirror city.

The new season is starting and the Master of Ceremonies is missing. Max, an Arbiter of the Split Worlds Treaty, is assigned with the task of finding him with no one to help but a dislocated soul and a mad sorcerer.

There is a witness but his memories have been bound by magical chains only the enemy can break. A rebellious woman trying to escape her family may prove to be the ally Max needs.

But can she be trusted? And why does she want to give up eternal youth and the life of privilege she’s been born into?

Review

I struggled to get into this one, and it took me some time to realise why. On the surface, it has everything I like in a novel – fantasy worlds, fairies and even a splash of the social intrigue that I enjoy in historical novels about court life. And it’s set in Bath. As an ex-resident of the city, I carry a certain, biased fondness for anything set within its streets.

But despite all this, I just couldn’t get going with it. I picked it up, read a little, put it down, read other books, and was generally unmotivated just to get it finished. I hate not finishing books, especially ones that I receive for review, so I plodded on with it and towards the end it did start to get a bit better. But not enough to payoff the slow start.

I think Between Two Thorns suffers for its multiple POV structure. There are several major players – some introduced early then promptly forgotten about, others not introduced ’til halfway through then given an inordinate amount of attention. It just felt a bit disjointed, and I couldn’t decide who was important.

It’s always the risk with multiple POV books that readers will like one character more than the others and consequently skip sections to get back to them, and I did feel a desire to do that in the early stages, before the disparate threads of narrative started heading towards a point of convergence.

When the climactic point of the narrative came together, it was quite a good payoff, and I enjoyed watching it all unravel. However, I was immediately then annoyed by the quite abrupt ‘Now you have to buy the next book’ ending. I don’t mind a bit of a cliffhanger, but there has to be some resolution. As I got to the final few percent on my Kindle, I just kept thinking ‘there is not enough space to wrap this up satisfactorily.’ And it didn’t.

The characters were pretty good – varied and each with their own motivations and interests. The Fae-touched were the most interesting, as was Arbiter Max and his dislocated soul companion.

I quite liked Cathy, though her sections were peppered with pop culture references – something I find incredibly irritating in books. Unless it’s a fashion reference in a book about fashion, or a nerdy reference in a book about a bunch of nerds, I personally think all pop culture references should be scrubbed out of books. Cathy’s frequent references to geek culture – Portal, Battlestar Galactica, Brazil – were supposed to highlight her geeky character, but the story wasn’t about her being a geek: it was about her wanting to live in the human world. That could have been got across without the references. But then, it’s a personal bugbear, and not necessarily something that will irritate other people as much as it did me.

Overall, just a bit of a mixed bag. I wonder if this is one of those books where the second one in the series is loads better because the set up stuff is all out of the way. I enjoyed it enough to consider finding that out, but unless it leaps off a shelf at me when it comes out, I feel I’ll probably have forgotten all about it by then…

Rating: 3.5/5

Review: Slated by Teri Terry

Title: Slated

Author: Teri Terry

Series: Slated #1

Genre: YA Dystopia

Summary (from Goodreads)

Kyla’s memory has been erased,
her personality wiped blank,
her memories lost for ever.

She’s been Slated.

The government claims she was a terrorist, and that they are giving her a second chance – as long as she plays by their rules. But echoes of the past whisper in Kyla’s mind. Someone is lying to her, and nothing is as it seems. Who can she trust in her search for the truth?

Review

I’m a big fan of things set in England. Like much of popular culture – there’s an overwhelming majority of American based stuff out there. Which is fine, I don’t mind that, but it’s nice to read something a little closer to home once in a while. To know what ‘Year 11′ means, and not have to worry about trying to figure out the relative ages of the characters and translate other minor differences. We might share a language, but British and American culture can sometimes be miles apart.

So, Slated is not only British, but a Dystopian (yay) and features an interesting premise about a memory erasing procedure that didn’t quite work properly on the main character. It should have been my favourite read of the month, but somehow it just didn’t sit quite right.

I really enjoyed the first half – Kyla getting used to her new home, slowly coming to realise that something is not right about her and how she can resist the monitoring effects of the Slating procedure. It should stop her ever getting angry or violent, it should make her placid and agreeable, but it doesn’t. And her uncertainty about why, her difficulty hiding it is interesting. The world was well imagined, the set up quite frightening at times, with the random disappearances and very public removals of rebels against the system – no matter how small the rebellion. You never knew quite who to trust out of the background characters, which added nicely to the overall sense of peril.

But then the second half went downhill for me.

The problem, I felt, was love interest Ben. Also Slated, but unlike Kyla, he’s not magically resistant to the effects of the treatment. As characters and love interests go, he’s entirely bland. The entire basis of the relationship seems to be that Kyla thinks he’s pretty. There’s vague allusion to ‘feeling like she knew him’, suggesting that there’s some history there, pre-Slating, but it’s not really explored in enough depth to make me buy the attraction.

So when the whole drive of the plot becomes Kyla trying to do things for Ben, to protect Ben, because Ben asked her to – it all just stopped making sense to me. I didn’t understand why she felt so strongly about him, because there was just nothing much to feel strongly about.

So the climax of the novel was mostly an anticlimax, and set ups for the next book felt a bit shoehorned in, which is a shame because they were the interesting parts. I would have much preferred the revelation about a figure from Kyla’s past to be the main thrust of the ending, the Ben stuff taking a back seat, but I guess the overwhelming selling power of teen romance sways everyone in the publishing process. It is a business after all.

Rating: 3.5/5

Review: The Holders by Julianna Scott

Title: The Holders

Author: Julianna Scott

Series: The Holders #1

Genre: YA Fantasy

Received for review from NetGalley

Summary (from Goodreads)

17-year-old Becca spent her whole life protecting her brother from, well, everything. The abandonment of their father, the so called ‘experts’ who insist that voices in his head are unnatural and must be dealt with, and the constant threat of being taken away to some hospital and studied like an animal. When two representatives appear claiming to have the answers to Ryland’s perceived problem, Becca doesn’t buy it for one second. That is until they seem to know things about Ryland and about Becca and Ryland’s family, that forces Becca to concede that there may be more to these people than meets the eye. Though still highly skeptical, Becca agrees to do what’s best for Ryland.

What they find at St. Brigid’s is a world beyond their imagination. Little by little they piece together the information of their family’s heritage, their estranged Father, and the legend of the Holder race that decrees Ryland is the one they’ve been waiting for. However, they are all–especially Becca–in for a surprise that will change what they thought they knew about themselves and their kind.

She meets Alex, a Holder who is fiercely loyal to their race, and for some reason, Becca and Ryland. There’s an attraction between Becca and Alex that can’t be denied, but her true nature seems destined to keep them apart. However, certain destinies may not be as clear cut as everyone has always believed them to be.

Becca is lost, but found at the same time. Can she bring herself to leave Ryland now that he’s settled and can clearly see his future? Will she be able to put the the feelings she has for Alex aside and head back to the US? And can Becca and Ryland ever forgive their father for what he’s done?

Review

Just sometimes, I read a book on my Kindle that I really wished I owned a physical copy of. The Holders was one such book. I know there are bookmark functions etc, but nothing really beats flicking back through a book to sections you loved and rereading them. And there were a lot of sections I would have flicked back to in The Holders.

Interestingly, it took me about three days to get past the first chapter (not entirely the book’s fault – I was very distractible at the time) but once Becca and her brother arrived in Ireland, things really kicked up a gear for me, and I just couldn’t put it down. To the point of trying to snatch a sentence or two while getting dressed. I just had to know what happened.

Well, I sort of knew what was going to happen – a couple of the plot twists were fairly obvious – but I didn’t care in the slightest. The characters were great, the relationships between them even better. Becca and Alex’s romance was so well done – bursting with believable romantic tension enough so that, had I been reading a physical copy, I would have been skipping ahead to try and find the next scenes involving them together. It was just so very romantic, and yet – within the fantastical context – utterly believable and real. With some ‘shout at the book’ moments thrown in, for good measure.

So, while it’s nothing particularly new or even daring, it was just perfect easy, indulgent reading, and I absolutely loved it.

And I might just have to buy that physical copy.

Rating: 5/5

Review: The Marsh People by Valentine Williams

Title: The Marsh People

Author: Valentine Williams

Series: N/A

Genre: Dystopia

Summary (from Goodreads)

In a post-industrial age, the last ‘free’ humans cower in hiding from the mysterious Masters and struggle for life in merciless marshlands. The Masters – human or alien – are never seen but rule the crumbling cities they dominate with fiendishly trained, dogs. The ferocious mastiffs are also the near-feral police force that raids pitiful villages and herds their occupants like sheep into inhuman city slavery and mindlessness. But city slave Scummo finds his latent humanity stirred when an orphaned child comes into his care … and they go on the run into the boggy wastelands, living rough, starving but skirting scattered tiny villages in constant fear of ‘the herdings’ by packs of pitiless hunting dogs, electronically programmed by the Masters to enslave or cull village-dwellers. Scummo and his young charge, Kelpin, re-learn long-forgotten survival skills from Bethyl, the fiercely independent female leader of one Marsh People group. But in the bloody struggle to survive against desperately competing wandering human bands, can Scummo and Kelpin avoid a return to primitive brutality, dehumanizing ignorance and even cannibalism or hope to replace the building blocks of civilization before it’s too late? And are the mysterious Masters secretly monitoring their every move, ready and able to destroy the last ragged vestiges of human liberty by unleashing the dogs of final war? In Scummo and Kelpin’s hair-raising odyssey of life as outcasts in a terrifying marshland, alive with both human and unworldly predators, Valentine Williams prompts us to ponder just how thin the veneer of civilization and humanity might be. Would mankind band together against a common enemy or would it turn on its own … just as the dogs so quickly became man’s worst enemy rather than his best friend.

Review

This is an odd one. There was an awful lot I really liked about it but at the same time, there were a few quirks that I didn’t like.

The story is reminiscent of many dystopia/survival genre things. There are a central group of characters to whom many bad, and good, things happen. There are deaths, relationships are formed, food is usually short, and wild animals are prone to attack. Which is good, because I like all of that sort of stuff. It’s why I watched Survivor for the short run that had on the BBC and why The Stand by Stephen King is still one of my favourite books.

There was a lot of great imagination on show – Scummo and Kelpin’s world was horribly realised, and the psychology behind the apathy of the city dwellers to do anything to change their lot all too believable. I loved the vicious eel creatures that dwelled in the water, ready to pick off any unsuspecting swimmers, and all the time there were little details that suggest the author knows a lot more about the world than she felt the need to let on. Another thing I really like in a dystopian novel.

At times I felt the plot was a little episodic, with no overall arc – besides the mysterious Masters, who I’ll come to in a moment – but in a lot of ways, this worked, because the story was less about a cataclysmic battle of good vs. evil, more about the small evils that humans are capable of committing, the constant struggle to resist giving in to those base urges and the question of why some people are more successful at that than others. Occasionally I felt the niggling need for the plot to have a bit of build up, but the more I read, the more I felt the senselessness of a lot of it was deliberate – a reflection of what life would really be like. Deaths are undramatic, and not played for tears, a bottle of water spilled in the opening sequence – the only bottle the characters have – is a reflection of random chaos, not a plot driver.

The characters were at times confusing – so many introduced so quickly meant I had a bit of a hard time getting a handle on people’s ages and personalities – but after a while became rounded and relatable, from fierce Kelpin, to quiet but determined Bethyl.

The narrative jumped around a bit between these characters, which is where this book started to jar with me a little. At one point, the narrative, previously 3rd person, switches to Kelpin’s 1st person perspective, and occasionally conversations are written out like script dialogue. I can sort of see – with so many characters involved in a discussion – why this has been done, but it felt a bit out of place, throwing me from the narrative.

Every so often, the narrative switched to the Masters, orchestrators of the situations our characters find themselves in, who appear to be doing some science experiment. This was my most major grumble with the book. I loved the idea of some people conducting a giant experiment on the population, watching them with cameras and manipulating them with food packages, but felt by the end that I either needed to know much more about them, or much less. As a mysterious threat, hanging over the heads of the survivors, who were never really sure what they were doing, or when they would strike, they could have been really scary. Seeing more of them could have tied the different threads of the story together in a much more typical way, providing an overall enemy, and the good vs evil battle. As it was, they were neither here nor there – present, but mostly as observers who occasionally discussed events at the end of chapters.

So, to summarise, a lot that I liked – survival, savage animal attacks, people being mean to each other and fighting for scraps in a dystopian marshland while our group of protagonists try valiantly to be the sort of survivors we all imagine we’d be: honourable and fair. However, a few quirks of narrative perspective and a threat that never really built to what I was anticipating left me feeling a little dissatisfied, but not so far as to say that I didn’t enjoy it.

Rating: 3.5/5

Review: Devil’s Due by Rachel Caine

Title: Devil’s Due

Author: Rachel Caine

Series: Red Letter Days #2

Genre: Paranormal Thriller

Received for review from NetGalley

Summary (from Goodreads)

The money Lucia and her new partner received to open their detective agency had come with strings: any assignment delivered via red envelope had to be top priority. No sweat. No one could make Lucia do something she didn’t believe in — right?

Wrong. Lucia soon learned that every choice she made meant life or death for innocent people. No one could be trusted, not even the ex-cop she’d hired — and fallen for. In fact, Ben might be her fatal weakness, if the powers warring to control the future used him to control Lucia…

Review

While I was initially thrown by the change of viewpoint from Jazz to Lucia, it quickly became apparent that this was definitely Lucia’s story, and therefore the decision to tell it from her perspective was really the only thing that made sense. Lucia was little more than a mystery in the first book, and though it’s very much drip fed in on the slowest setting, it’s nice to see her character fleshed out with a bit of background detail.

Games are raised with anthrax scares, abductions and more veiled threats from the ‘are they good or bad?’ guys and there’s a definite step up in the mythology. Lucia no longer feels like a bit player in the conspiracy of the Cross and Eidolon movements, but an integral part of something massive, and as we discover things as she does, we are right there with every moment of disorientation and confusion. A lot of the time, I didn’t really know what was going on in this book. In the best possible way.

It was a shame that, though this was obviously Lucia’s story, Jazz felt a bit lost in the background. After spending so much time with her in the first book, it was more than a little jarring to have her relegated so completely to the background. It would be nice if the next book featured an equal spread of their viewpoints, though with the focus so much on the romance side of things, I wonder if some other character might not be introduced.

But, overall it retained the same fun, fast and sexy qualities of the first book, and I’ll be keeping my eye out for the next instalment.

Rating: 4/5

Review: Devil’s Bargain by Rachel Caine

Title: Devil’s Bargain

Author: Rachel Caine

Series: Red Letter Days #1

Genre: Paranormal Thriller

Summary (from Goodreads)

Jasmine “Jazz” Callender is on the downhill slide to ruin. Once a decorated homicide detective, she’s lost it all: her former partner’s been convicted of murder, she’s been cashiered out, and she’s drinking away what little self-respect she’s got left.

But Jazz has a talent for trouble, and somebody knows it. When a mysterious, sexy stranger comes looking for her with a fateful red envelope in his hand, she’s about to make the deal of her life…for good or bad.

The deal requires her to enter into a partnership with a stranger and investigate cases that arrive in special red envelopes…which is odd enough, but gets weirder as she and her new partner Lucia realize that they may be working for someone with supernatural abilities.

And maybe they’re not on the side of the angels anymore.

Review

I must admit, I love a bit of ‘whose side are you on?’ drama. Well done, it can be a delicious blend of intrigue, tension (romantic or otherwise) and clever plot twists to keep you guessing. Badly done, it can be infuriating as characters swap sides for no discernible reason.

Devil’s Bargain fell on the right side of that line. Full to the brim with intrigue and plenty of romantic tension, it’s a taught, pacy read based around a concept that leaves loads of options for exploration. Sinister companies, mysterious forces, good guy/bad guy love interests and a heroine with serious attitude bring plenty of flavour to the pot.

On the downside, it’s a fairly disposable thriller. The intrigue was gripping when I had the book in my hand, and I didn’t hesitate to pick up the sequel, but I haven’t thought about it since. The books are fairly short, and the romance is a focus. There are hints that there could be wider consequences to the actions of Jazz and her friends, but for now it’s all very much rooted in the consequences for them alone. Until it’s opened up a bit and a little more threat to the wider population introduced, it just won’t have that ‘play on the mind’ factor that, for me, really pushes this sort of thing up to the five star rating.

Rating: 4/5

Review: Scary Mary by S.A. Hunter

Title: Scary Mary

Author: S.A. Hunter

Series: Scary Mary #1

Genre: YA Paranormal

Self Published

Summary (from Goodreads)

Mary just wants to be left alone, but the cheerleaders, jocks, guidance counselors, and ghosts won’t stop harrassing her. When a new boy starts school, he surprises Mary by befriending her. That’s a rare thing for the school freak, but her unusual abilities put a rift in their budding friendship when Mary has to tell Cy that his home is haunted and not by Casper, the friendly ghost.

Review

So two of my younger siblings have been telling me that this book is a must read. In Taylor’s words, ‘It’s like Carrie 2 bad. Bad in a really good way.’

I have to say, I agree.

Scary Mary reads like every Scary Movie film made. Predictable, yes; entertaining, yes; going to stay in you mind for more than ten minutes afterwards, no. The characters were all  comfortable cliches – Mary the outcast, Rachel her wacky friend, Vicky the evil cheerleader, there was nothing groundbreaking or original. But I think sometimes that’s nice. It’s like watching a film where you know all the lines before the actors speak them, but you enjoy it any way.

The plot was reasonable, though the signposting was so obvious I had the ending figured out about three chapters before, and some of the friendship drama was a bit random – Cy ran a bit hot and cold at times, and Rachel’s decision to randomly stomp off seemed a bit contrived to make Mary have to go somewhere alone. Again, it comes back to the cliche thing. Scary Mary has all of them, but if you go in knowing that (‘Carrie 2 bad. Bad in a really good way’) it’s still an entertaining read.

It didn’t take me long at all to read – I finished off most of it while in the bath, before the water even got cold – and while that’s partly because it’s quite short, it’s also because the writing style is fairly engaging and easy going. There were some clumsy passages – a few bits of unintentional repetition and some phrasing that didn’t read right, which comes from being copy-edited not properly edited – but overall the writing was pretty clean and straight forwards. The formatting and copy-editing were good too – I didn’t spot any mistakes, and I’ve read published books that weren’t as neatly formatted for Kindle.

And this one’s free, so definitely worth checking out. If you hate it, it won’t have cost you anything but the time it took you to realise. And like my sister, Charlie (who has bought the sequel), you might just find it’s your new favourite book.

Rating: 3.5/5

S.A. Hunter’s Website: http://www.sahunter.net/