Well I have bought the next book but..

This is the sort of story where you feel like you are waiting on something interesting to happen by this I mean yes things that are not overly exciting happen but throughout the story you are told something is blocking her nature and it feels like you are ever waiting for this to be resolved any minute so we can get onto the exciting parts but this never occurs at least not in this book. I did buy the next audiobook about half way through this book thinking it was getting exciting but in hindsight I’m not sure I would have given my current experience. I found the premise of the book interesting but the result could have been much better and I feel there are many other similar themed books that are much more stimulating.

EDIT: After listening to this book for the second time, four years later, what I found most frustrating is how the mc is so dense, so incredibly dumb and endlessly fails to see the obvious and makes such stupid mistakes. It must be this genre but it seems the writers always create such dense female characters and I've listened to hundreds of this genre. It's a rare treat when I find book series like The Hundredth Queen by Emily R. king where the main characters are strong, intelligent female leads who don't make stupid mistakes. I just find this genre so frustrating, think surely the average real-life girls don't act like this. Anyway, I'm sure you are pre-warned.

2 people found this helpful

***Poetic***

The writer writes like a poet and listening to the narrator feels like listening to a poetry reading it's good but it get very tedious as it goes on and on. I'm a simple person looking for scape from my mundane life, I like simple, action, romance and good plot not poetic words that's actually annoying. Just too much of it. Blah Blah but the narrative itself is excellent, Bailey Carr she us amazing. Bianca please spare us your poetic narrative.

1 person found this helpful

Hard going - definitely not for adults

I usually love a bit of Young Adult fiction but this was excruciating to listen to. Unless you are about 12 years old I really wouldn’t recommend it.

1 person found this helpful

This may have killed my love of books

I'm going to preface my review with this: I love books, and don't like to attack them. I know how much work goes into them, and how much love. Sometimes. I know people get angry about reviewers leaving unfavourable comments on their favourite books, so I'll be as objective and constructive as possible.

I picked this book up because of the premise. It was pitched well on amazon and kept coming up in my suggestions so I was like, what the hell, I like me a trashy Paranormal YA. "Maybe it won't be so bad and will have some decent content," I wondered, much like the many times Jemma did rather than using asked or questioned, because that would require a modicum of decent writing.

Here are the things about this book that I enjoyed/liked/were genuinely good:
1. I listened to this on my jogs so it forced me to hurry the hell up so I could stop listening.
2. I hatched a lot of Pokemon eggs because of that

Now, here are the things about this book that have earned my 1 star (if I could give less, I would) rating.
This novel is essentially an OOC mashup fanfic of Twilight/Buffy/other YA novels. It wasn't very well thought out. Its sloppily written, with a lot of nonsensical flowery prose, confused tense, two dimensional characters (I literally liked no one) and read as a bored housewives attempt at writing to feel good about herself and her mundane life. Which, everyone needs outlets. They just normally don't charge people money for their lackluster narcissistic jerk off. Man, if people though Bella Swan was a Mary Sue, Jemma is something else. Aside from being vaguely described as pretty and a little like dear author, she has no personality, no distinguishing features. She spent the whole book running from guy to guy (There were like, five different guys she mentioned hooking up with/wanting to??) and honestly that took up all her time. Also, remarkable at her lack of PTSD or any adverse problems to, I don't know, watching her father die at the hands of a murderous vampire and then being condemned to an institute? Then she spends the whole book questioning EVERYTHING and sounding so stupid and vapid, but totally waves off her remaining family doing these things to her. Right.
More of this book is taken up talking about the sapphire pools that are Trace's eyes than in the entire Twilight Saga. That in itself is a feat, I have to admit. Along with Trace's jaw ticing near constantly (I don't mean to sound rude, but I genuinely wondered if he was having seizures or something for his jaw muscles to spasm so much). The minute pieces of plot revolved around all these hot dudes getting into fights, btw.
Then we have the grammar. "Blinked into him", "stammered backwards", and really cringey alliteration were a few of the things that happened a lot into this book. If someone had told me that a computer program had written this, I might be impressed. But the sheer ABUSE of the English language/grammar was appalling. I've seen literal thirteen year olds create better pieces of prose.
Every character served as a background piece to Jemma's uselessness and honestly were interchangeable. Her alleged bestie (who she BARELY spends time with) is back seat to whatever hot boy of the day it is, to the point that she doesn't even apologise for blowing her off to go make out with ANOTHER dude. Then we have Nicki, the only other name I remember, because she was a heinous bitch for no reason??? Also, just quickly- if you're gonna rip off Twilight, at least be creative about how you do it. The stupid sitting down in the restaurant scene where vampire dude doesn't eat etc were so cringe I had to slip my headphones off and actually hope no one heard me listening to this garbage.

There are a lot of other points I wanted to raise/comment on but the reviews that I read that aren't "Omg THIS IS THE BEST BOOK EVAAAAAAA OMG HAWT DUUUUUDES" cover my points sufficiently and often better than I have here. I also want to stop this review before it turns into a straight up bashing, because I'm 100% furious I wasted 14 hours reading this. Which, by the way, one last point- what was WRONG with the narrator???

"Don't shelf your book, and essentially your dream, because some self-appointed gatekeeper said no to you."- Bianca Scardoni. I include this quote because in my little google search of her, this really stuck out at me. Like really, really stuck out. There's a reason why agents, publishers, and editors exist. There's a reason it's called the publishing industry. They don't just arbitrarily decide that they Know Everything. Even if you self publish, always always ALWAYS go to an editor. It's books like this one that, rather sadly, leave a bad taste in people's mouths re: indie books. Love yourself a little authors. Love your work enough to do it justice. Take a class, or even occasionally go outside and see how people actually act, read a book on grammar or a thesaurus. Hint: the author should have done all of these, and more.

3 people found this helpful

Absolute rubbish! Don't waste your money!

Cowardly, stupid main character that just doesn't get it and needs to be rescued by males! Eye rolls every 10 minutes!

3 people found this helpful

Love hate

So this came up in my Recommended because I read the Fallen series and to tell you the truth, I was a bit skeptical of this book at first because it had SO MANY similarities but I pushed on. I'm actually pretty keen to continue this series, though it may be similar it isn't the same. So that's why I love hate it :p

well written, fast moving, fun twists.

this is a well written book with plenty of twists and turns to keep it interesting.
I wasn't 100% sold on the FMC at the beginning but I really enjoyed how she grew and came into her own by the end of the book.
I'm very interested to see what happens from here and have already purchased book 2.

great book!!!

great humor. very well read keeps you rivited to the story line waiting for what comes next!!!