Review: Uninvited by Sophie Jordan

Uninvited by Sophie Jordan
Series: Uninvited #1
Publisher: HarperTeen
Source: Edelweiss
ISBN: 9780062233653
Release Date: January 28, 2014
Pages:

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The Scarlet Letter meets Minority Report in bestselling author Sophie Jordan's chilling new novel about a teenage girl who is ostracized when her genetic test proves she's destined to become a murderer.

When Davy Hamilton's tests come back positive for Homicidal Tendency Syndrome (HTS)-aka the kill gene-she loses everything. Her boyfriend ditches her, her parents are scared of her, and she can forget about her bright future at Juilliard. Davy doesn't feel any different, but genes don't lie. One day she will kill someone.

Only Sean, a fellow HTS carrier, can relate to her new life. Davy wants to trust him; maybe he's not as dangerous as he seems. Or maybe Davy is just as deadly.

Uninvited and I had a lot of ups and downs. After reading Foreplay by Sophie Jordan I was super stoked to read Uninvited even though it was a completely different genre. I really loved the characters in Foreplay and maybe that’s why I did connect with this book.

The biggest problem I had with Uninvited was the characters. The main character, Davy Hamilton, was a bit boring. I got that she’s just a regular girl who had her world shattered when she is found with the kill gene, but I just couldn’t connect with her. Most of the characters were flat and one-dimensional. I didn’t bond with any of them. Sean was meant to be mysterious and a loner, but he just seemed empty and blank to me. I didn't get any sense of who he was.


Hardly anyone had any emotional reaction in the entire book except for some of the sociopaths when they were attacking others. Davy’s brother Mitchell was the only character who had sort of reaction to her having the kill gene. Her mother barely acknowledged it happened, and her father pretty much disappeared from her life and was constantly working. Mitchell is the black sheep of the family. He’s constantly in trouble and has been kicked out of school countless times. Mitchell breaks down when he finds out that Davy has the kill gene and it’s heartening because you see how much he cares about his younger sister.

“Don’t apologize for being smarter than I am. I got over it. Basically, I’m . . . I’m just proud of you. And this crap doesn’t change that. It doesn’t change you.”

The plot did intrigue me and you could see how the country was getting worse and worse and it was only a matter of time until the Agency was given the power to control the HTS carriers. It didn't seem like not enough time has passed from the present until when the book takes place for all the downturn and violence to happen. The book cites stats from 2017, but I can’t envision how so much violence can happen in such a short time span.

The one thing that was done well was the sense of fear for Davy’s future. Little bits of events would happen that made you scared for her well-being. She no longer had any rights and no one will ever believe her again as she is now this violent and unstable girl.

I am going to read the second and final book in the series when it is released as I do want to see how this all turns out.

My Rating:

Review: The Chaos of Stars by Kiersten White

The Chaos of Stars
Publisher: HarperTeen
Source: Edelweiss
ISBN: 9780062135926
Release Date: September 10, 2013
Pages: 195

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Kiersten White, New York Times bestselling author of Paranormalcy, is back with The Chaos of Stars—an enchanting novel set in Egypt and San Diego that captures the magic of first love and the eternally complicated truth about family.

Isadora's family is seriously screwed up—which comes with the territory when you're the human daughter of the ancient Egyptian gods Isis and Osiris. Isadora is tired of living with crazy relatives who think she's only worthy of a passing glance—so when she gets the chance to move to California with her brother, she jumps on it. But her new life comes with plenty of its own dramatic—and dangerous—complications . . . and Isadora quickly learns there's no such thing as a clean break from family.

Blending Ally Carter's humor and the romance of Cynthia Hand's Unearthly, The Chaos of Stars takes readers on an unforgettable journey halfway across the world and back, and proves there's no place like home.

In high school my favourite class was ancient history. I loved learning about the Egyptian culture and different gods. So when I had the chance to read The Chaos of Stars I was intrigued. I haven’t read any of Kiersten White’s other books so I didn’t know what to expect. The Chaos of Stars was a bit different from other fantasy books I have read. You are immediately brought into this old world with Isis and Osiris and their various family members.

Isadora is Isis and Osiris’ human teenage daughter. Every twenty years Isis has a new child. Somehow Isis and Osiris sire a human child. This is never explained to us how two gods make a human, but we are just to assume it makes sense. Isadora has some serious issues with her family.

“My parents brought me into the world to die. They didn't love me enough to keep me forever- they didn't even pretend like they did.”

For most of the book there is a lot of self-loathing. Isadora felt used by her parents and cannot forgive them for being immortal and not making her a god.

Parenthood is selfish. There’s no reason to bring a child into the world other than that you want one for your own self-centered reasons.”

I ran out of that horrible room. For the first time in my life I did understand. All of the stories, the histories I’d been raised on? I had no part in them. My parents brought me into the world to die. They didn’t love me enough to keep my forever.

Her self-loathing came across as extremely whiny in the first bit of the book. I get that she hate her parents and her father can’t remember her name, but let’s move on. Not everything is about you. At times Isadora could come across as juvenile, especially when she was talking about her brother, Horus (or Whore-us), and his wife Hathor, goddess of beer and sex. She despised Hathor because she liked to drink and was constantly “sexed up”. Of course she was Hathor is the goddess of those things.

Finally Isadora has an opportunity to leave Egypt and go to San Diego to live with her brother. When she finds out that her brother, Sirius has a wife, Denna, and a baby on the way she is rude to Deena and can’t believe her brother would do this to her.

On the inside I am screaming, spinning in dizzy circles, bedding my Egyptian prison farewell forever, because one thing is certain: Once I make it out of her, I am never, ever coming back. I will no longer be a temporary guest checked into the Hotel of the Gods.

I loved Ry. He was gorgeous and wrote epic poetry. How could you not love someone who spews this:

I didn’t fall in love with you. I walked into love with you, with my eyes wide open, choosing to take every step along the way. I do believe in fate and destiny, but I also believe we are only fated to do things that we’d choose anyway. And I’d choose you; in a hundred lifetimes, in a hundred worlds, in any version of reality, I’d find you and I’d choose you.

The ending is quick predictable, but I think this would be a good book for younger teens as it was an easy and quick read, but Isadora would probably frustrate a lot of people.

My Rating:

Review: Unravel Me by Tahereh Mafi

Unravel Me by Tahereh Mafi
Series: Shatter Me #2
Source: Borrowed
Release Date: February 13, 2013

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it's almost
time for war.

Juliette has escaped to Omega Point. It is a place for people like her—people with gifts—and it is also the headquarters of the rebel resistance.

She's finally free from The Reestablishment, free from their plan to use her as a weapon, and free to love Adam. But Juliette will never be free from her lethal touch.

Or from Warner, who wants Juliette more than she ever thought possible.

In this exhilarating sequel to Shatter Me, Juliette has to make life-changing decisions between what she wants and what she thinks is right. Decisions that might involve choosing between her heart—and Adam's life.

To begin, I wasn't the biggest fan of the first novel, Shatter Me, in this series. I found it mediocre at best. Again with this book I found this to be super annoying, distracting, etc. In the first book, there was something else that annoyed me about the writing style, but I couldn't put my finger on it. I finally realized that half of the book is full of analogies and pretty similes. I feel that the author was trying too hard to make the writing pretty and didn't do enough world building.

I don’t think this book should necessarily be labelled as dystopian. It is more romance first with a little dystopian/paranormal to fill in the background.

The novel begins with Juliette at Omega trying to hone her special powers. Omega Point seems very much like X-Men's Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters. She has not adjusted at all. I don't feel like she really tried to adjust or make friends. You do feel how lonely she is throughout the beginning of the book and how she is burdened with the guilt for being considered a "monster" for the first 17 years of her life. She just wants to be like all the other girls, have friends and a boyfriend who she can touch without killing.

By the time I was a third into the book, I was tired of how whiny and pathetic Juliette was becoming. She did become much stronger by the end of the book.

The only character I truly enjoyed was Kenji. He was funny throughout the novel, but was still able to be serious and could tell Juliette he just doesn’t care about her love life that their situation was bigger than that.

The battle in the middle of the book was written pretty well. It had lots of action, but didn’t drag on. After the battle I found the last half of the book to drag out a bit, and it was almost anti-climactic until the cliff-hanger on the last page.

My Rating:

Review: The Dead and the Gone by Susan Beth Pfeffer

The Dead and The Gone by Susan Beth Pfeffer
Series: Last Survivors #2
Publisher: HMH Books for Young Readers
Source: Bought
ISBN: 9780547422268
Release Date: June 1, 2008


Susan Beth Pfeffer’s Life as We Knew It enthralled and devastated readers with its brutal but hopeful look at an apocalyptic event--an asteroid hitting the moon, setting off a tailspin of horrific climate changes. Now this harrowing companion novel examines the same events as they unfold in New York City, revealed through the eyes of seventeen-year-old Puerto Rican Alex Morales. When Alex's parents disappear in the aftermath of tidal waves, he must care for his two younger sisters, even as Manhattan becomes a deadly wasteland, and food and aid dwindle.

With haunting themes of family, faith, personal change, and courage, this powerful new novel explores how a young man takes on unimaginable responsibilities.

The Dead and the Gone centres around Alex Morales. A Puerto Rican boy who goes to a Catholic school. This is the second book in The Last Survivors series, where an asteroid bumps the moon a little closer to the earth causing severe changes to tides, volcanic eruptions, etc.

I found a lot of what happened in this book was repetitive of the first book and Alex's voice was very interchangeable to the main character in the first novel, but I did enjoy Miranda's character in the first novel more. She just seemed stronger where Alex's character came across as flat and boring. And when he wasn't boring his reactions were completely unrealistic. After someone tries to pimp out your sister you DON'T shake his hand and say "no hard feelings!"

One of the stronger characters in the novel was his youngest sister, Julie. At the start she is nothing more than a whiny brat who fusses if she didn't get her own way. As the novel continues, even though she is only 12, she must push her childhood aside and help her brother survive.

The author does try to show that Alex must suffer and scavenge, but they seem to have a lack of resourcefulness, and I'm not sure they would have actually survived in a real disaster.

My Rating: