I keep waiting to read the Southern Gothic urban fantasy YA novel that's going to really knock my socks off. I thought that maybe it would be this one! But nope.
It starts off well enough: Lena is the new girl in Gatlin, South Carolina, and the niece of the notorious recluse - the town's very own Boo Radley. Ethan, a basketball player who's desperate to escape this town after graduation, is immediately drawn to her. Weird stuff keeps happening around Lena: massive thunderstorms out of nowhere, shattered windows, and then it becomes clear that Lena is the same girl he's been seeing in a reoccurring dream for ages and also they can hear each other in their minds. Obviously, it's love.
There's a lot of stuff here that I like, mostly related to the two of them attempting to figure out what their connection is and piecing together their families' histories. Lena's uncle has lots of secrets, as does Ethan's grandmother and great-aunts. I was bored by a lot of the high school drama though, and much of the suspense of the book came from characters deliberately keeping information from each other, and while that was always for Reasons I was frequently unconvinced by them. And then we got to the final climax, and I found it both underwhelming and also frustrating, because of course this was another first book to a series, rather than a complete story. I get why people want to read series of books, and why they're so common in YA in particular. But sometimes I just wish that a story could be done in one book.
Grade: C
It starts off well enough: Lena is the new girl in Gatlin, South Carolina, and the niece of the notorious recluse - the town's very own Boo Radley. Ethan, a basketball player who's desperate to escape this town after graduation, is immediately drawn to her. Weird stuff keeps happening around Lena: massive thunderstorms out of nowhere, shattered windows, and then it becomes clear that Lena is the same girl he's been seeing in a reoccurring dream for ages and also they can hear each other in their minds. Obviously, it's love.
There's a lot of stuff here that I like, mostly related to the two of them attempting to figure out what their connection is and piecing together their families' histories. Lena's uncle has lots of secrets, as does Ethan's grandmother and great-aunts. I was bored by a lot of the high school drama though, and much of the suspense of the book came from characters deliberately keeping information from each other, and while that was always for Reasons I was frequently unconvinced by them. And then we got to the final climax, and I found it both underwhelming and also frustrating, because of course this was another first book to a series, rather than a complete story. I get why people want to read series of books, and why they're so common in YA in particular. But sometimes I just wish that a story could be done in one book.
Grade: C
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