starkiwi's reviews
306 reviews

I liked this book. It was quite interesting and almost educational about the mystical world around me that I am, sadly, not a part of. Yet anyway. This book was all about paranormal creatures like angels, nephilim, fairies, and werewolves. I find all that stuff very interesting. Which made this a good book to me. The only thing I don't like about this book is how the girl still wants to live a normal life even though her life is pretty normal. She goes to school, shopping, hangs out with friends, and has trouble with the 'mean kids' at school. How much more of a cliche high school life can you get? It seems unnecessary for her to want that if she mostly already has it. I compare this book a little bit to Shadowhunters, by Cassandra Clare. That book also has most of the paranormal creatures found here as well. I try not to compare, but its hard when those are the only two books that I know to have nephilim in them. While this book seems fantasy with its nature, it is as much a romance. There is a lot of kissing and lovey dovey stuff with the main character and her boyfriend. I am ok with that. I don't always like the romance, but this amount was well balanced with the action and fights that occasionally took place. I hope to have more action in the next books of this series. I am not too exited about reading them and I know if I start to not like the series I will abandon it. However, it is defiantly worth giving a shot. While I might not like it too much, you might love it.
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I was very impressed by this book. When I first got it I did not expect it to be this god. Especially by the cover, which I really didn't like, but that can be easily overlooked. All the characters were developed nicely and I felt a certain connection to almost all of them. Except for Violet. Her story was not as exiting as Kali's. However, I felt it did give me a little more insight into the world of Tracing Shadows. I hope she doesn't have many, or any, chapters in the sequel. Thankfully she only had a few in this book. She was just a snotty character with no real purpose to the main plot of the story. It was more her job to show us the citizen side of the issues and give background to some of the things they talk about. I really liked how Kali could 'see all' with her different disguises. It was also a look into different parts of the world. I felt that really helped me to understand where I was. The beginning was kind of rocky in that area. It took a little while to get the gist of things. And that was ok with me because I like to figure that stuff out, as long as no important story line is happening that I need to focus on when I still don't know where I am. It was a real treat to read this book, and I absolutely can't wait for the next one. The ending left me hanging and I need to know what happens next. I sincerely hope that the second book is as good as the first. I can't wait two whole months!!! Oh, the suspense!!!

I did not find this book to be too engaging. I normally don't like realistic fiction for a lot of these reasons. The one thing I did like about this book was that the parents actively played a role in the protagonists life. In some realistic fiction books, the parents are left out of the story and never brought into the whole plot. And I'm here thinking 'my parents would never let me get away with that'. That made this book very realistic. One of the things I really didn't like about this book is that it was a mystery. Normally I am fine with a good mystery, but this book left a lot of motives unexplained. I don't like that at all. I need to know who the character did that, or at least have some evidence to why a character would do something like that. This book left a lot of things open and unexplained. I was very confused about some of the characters at the end of the book. Overall the book just didn't grab my attention. I was more reading it to read it, not to experience it. Maybe it just wasn't my kind of book, and I confess that someone who likes this kind of stuff would really like this book. but not me. I was very disappointed I had used my reading time to read this book. True that it may help me in the future at some crazy point in time. Otherwise I just didn't like it.

I’m not sure how this book got published. I found so many grammatical, and structural errors throughout the entire book. The plot sometimes stayed on point, but also sometimes drifted away from what the entire story was about. It also needs more explanation, I was very confused with a lot of the things she said. It was quite bad and needs to be extended longer, AND have all its errors corrected. I recommend to send it through a number of editors.

Its always fun to go back and reread a book. Especially if its one you love and partially remember. I know I had a lot of fun rereading this book. It is one of my favorites. Throughout the book I was just like “Oh, I remember this part!”. It brought me so much joy. Like seeing a best friend you haven’t seen in a very long time, and you still like all the same stuff. That friend is this book, and I think it will continue to stay that way for quite a while. Since I hadn’t read the book for a while, but still watched the movie, I was able to compare the two. Most of the things do not stay the same. However, I am fine with it. In this case I love both the book and the movie.


P.S. warning to new readers of this series. Beware of the third book. Fans, you will know what I’m talking about.

This series could really have been a single stand alone book. The author really didn’t need to add the other two books. Im not exactly complaining here. I did give the book three stars for a reason. The author is a good writer. Everything is very nicely written and structured. The plot has a good flow and is very loopy (suspenseful and exciting). The only reason I didn’t really like this book is that the author kind of lost me. I have been reading dystopian trilogies for a long time. This is not one of the best and I think I was just getting tired of that sort of flow. I wanted something new. So the only reason this book does not have more stars is because I wasn’t pulled in.

I don’t really like realistic fiction. Its too real for me, and doesn’t have enough suspense usually. This book was the same. Yes, it is supposed to be a mystery, but I did not have any guess on the killer. And it ended up to not be one of the choices you are seemingly given. There was also way too much crime stuff. You know, where the police don’t believe her, and put outrageous accusations on people. I really hate that, because sometimes the people are clearly innocent, and the police have only a tiny reason to lock them up. Then they lock them up. It just annoys me, because I like to be able to understand my characters and what is going on. I think someone could like this book, if they are ok with that. The writing was fine. The plot made sense. Just all the Police stuff really shot this book down for me.

It was interesting. This is one of the realistic fiction books I can actually stand. I had a good time reading it, especially because it was for a margin project at my local library. Meaning I was supposed to write in the book as I went along. I ended up drawing little snakes everywhere! That did not take away from the writing or the characters. I found that I was able to connect to quite a few of the characters in here and shared similar experiences. Jeff Zentner really did a great job on this book. I have read his other book, Goodbye Days, which I didn’t really like. This was a huge step up and was cool how he connected them. At the end of this book they talk about one person (I’m trying not to spoil it because I really want to share the connection with you) becoming a musician. His name is Dearly. In Goodbye Days the main character and his friends talk about going to a Dearly concert. Cool, right!?

I assume everyone wanting to read this book knows it is sad. Just from all the talk about it. From the moment I looked at the cover, my mom told me not to read it. Said it was the worst book ever. But could not prevent me from picking it up and reading it for myself. It was one of those books that you feel you cannot live a lifetime without reading. I can now tell you that she was wrong. Just because a book makes you cry does not mean it is a bad book. For that reason it is probably one of the best written ones. If the author was a bad writer you would not fall in love with the characters. You would not be so invested in their lives that you wished and prayed everything would be alright for them after all their struggles. After all, the struggles a character has temps you to feel empathy for them. If this book was badly written readers would not be so saddened by the ending. Therefore it is a great book. If a book is able to make me cry over a fictional being then congrats to the author. That is the true sign of a good book. Emotion means you care, and if you don’t care then the book was not well written enough to make you. That is the authors main goal in writing. If we did not care, we would not pick the book up off the shelves. So yes; this book made my cry. Yes; this author seemed terrible for doing it at the time. But this is a book about life and death. It puts the life into perspective and places death into life. And yes; I am still crying now. This book is way more than just okay.

“Okay,”

This book is like Twilight before Twilight. It was OK. Most of the time I would think that these kind of book have sequels and are usually in a trilogy. Only this book is not. Which fits it perfectly. I think any more of what I was reading and it would be too much. The writing in here is very good. Only characterization is not. By the end of the book if you asked me to name ten characters in the book, (There were way more than ten) I would not be able to. I have forgotten who most of the characters are and what they look like. I imagined the characters a certain way and then at the end of the book they mentioned it was something else entirely. It definitely made me a little confused. The ending was rattling for me. I had never even thought of that ending as a possibility. I think that the author probably should have at least tried to make it a somewhat possibility during the book so I could somewhat imagine it and not be like "What?" at the end. I don't have too much to say on this book, which means it wasn't a great book. But it wasn't terrible either. It still makes for a good cozy romance on a rainy day.