The Girl At Midnight Review

The Girl at Midnight by Melissa Grey

Title: The Girl at Midnight

Author: Melissa Grey

Series: The Girl at Midnight #1

Publisher: Delacorte Press

Publication Date: April 28, 2015

Genre: Fiction; Fantasy; Romance; Young Adult

Pages: 357

Format: ARC

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Beneath the streets of New York City live the Avicen, an ancient race of people with feathers for hair and magic running through their veins. Age-old enchantments keep them hidden from humans. All but one. Echo is a runaway pickpocket who survives by selling stolen treasures on the black market, and the Avicen are the only family she's ever known.

Echo is clever and daring, and at times she can be brash, but above all else she's fiercely loyal. So when a centuries-old war crests on the borders of her home, she decides it's time to act.

Legend has it that there is a way to end the conflict once and for all: find the Firebird, a mythical entity believed to possess power the likes of which the world has never seen. It will be no easy task, though if life as a thief has taught Echo anything, it's how to hunt down what she wants . . . and how to take it.

But some jobs aren't as straightforward as they seem. And this one might just set the world on fire.

How to describe this book…A Mortal Instruments copycat? Sure. Honorable attempt turned epic failure? Yes. Boring? Definitely.

Echo is a self-taught thief adopted by the magical race of the Avicen, a.k.a. The Bird People. The Avicen has had a raging, violent war with their counterparts, the Drakharin, a.k.a. The Lizard People, for centuries. The only hope for either race’s survival is the Firebird, a mystical object with enough power to stop the war or destroy everyone in it, and Echo is tasked with finding it. Her seemingly impossible mission will bring unlikely enemies and allies alike, and Echo will have to decide who she can and cannot trust.

Looking back on it now, it even sounds ridiculous.

From page one, I’ve felt as if I’d read it all before. Nothing was new, including the characters. Take the Mortal Instruments: one female human, several non-human friends, one guy in love with another guy in love with another guy in love with the female human, and one non-human sister-brother pair. The Girl at Midnight was exactly the same. Exactly. No difference what-so-ever. If I wanted to read another Mortal Instruments novel, I would’ve just read the original. I would’ve been more entertained the second time around than I was with the first time of The Girl at Midnight.

The romance desperately needed something. A lot of something. I could see the potential, but it was never realized and all around just made me sad. The “snark” and “wit” of the main character was rudimentary and unoriginal. The setting was uninteresting, as was the plot. I was never totally clear on the exact plot/goal of the characters. I lost focus about mid-way and never found it again. Overall, a whole-heartedly one star disappointment. 

The Shadow Hour

April 7, 2016

Atlantia Review

Atlantia by Allie Condie

Title: Atlantia

Author: Ally Condie

Series: None

Publisher: Dutton Children’s

Publication Date: October 28, 2014

Genre: Fiction; Fantasy; Futuristic; Dystopia; Romance; Young Adult

Pages: 368

Format: Hardcover

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Can you hear Atlantia breathing?

For as long as she can remember, Rio has dreamt of the sand and sky Above—of life beyond her underwater city of Atlantia. But in a single moment, all her plans for the future are thwarted when her twin sister, Bay, makes an unexpected decision, stranding Rio Below. Alone, ripped away from the last person who knew Rio’s true self—and the powerful siren voice she has long hidden—she has nothing left to lose.

Guided by a dangerous and unlikely mentor, Rio formulates a plan that leads to increasingly treacherous questions about her mother’s death, her own destiny, and the complex system constructed to govern the divide between land and sea. Her life and her city depend on Rio to listen to the voices of the past and to speak long-hidden truths.

Ugh. I just—ugh. UGHHHGHHGHG.

(Me at the first sighting of Atlantia)

Me: Ooh pretty book. (Strokes cover a little creepily)

Book: Read me. I’m fantastic, I promise.

Me: I don’t know…

Book: I’m a futuristic romance with sirens and other cool stuff…come on, you know you want to.

Me: (with pitiful naiveté) Okay!

It was pathetic. And it’s never happening again. I am so done with sirens.

Rio wants to leave the Below more than anything. She’s dreamt of living in the sands of the Above all her life, but in the few seconds it takes for her sister to abandon her in the underwater city of Atlantia, Rio is stuck. Forever. Dun dun DUUUN. She seeks the help of a stranger to get her above ground, to find her sister who obviously has a perfectly reasonable reason for leaving Rio there to wither away alone. Obviously. Then there’s a little romance and blah blah blah until it finally ends.

I was so bored. I was bored writing the summary. I was bored reading the actual book. Every time I opened that stupid awful thing that is not a novel, I died a little in side. The book nerd in me started to cry.

If you haven’t already figured it out, I hated this book.

First of all, the names. THE NAMES. We get it, there’s lots of water. You don’t have to name your characters after it! We get the picture. I mean, Bay? Rio? Oceana? REALLY?? Can we have a little subtlety please? Apparently not.

The writing was even worse. Apparently young adult readers need to be talked to like they’re fourth graders, and they need to like it. If you haven’t noticed, the best young adult books speak to adults and teens with a level of intelligence both can understand and enjoy. Taking away all the talent and skill that comes with writing a novel does not make it better. It makes it awful. Period. Exclamation point.

I didn’t even like the idea of mermaids and sirens in the first place. I’ve never read a book that actually did it well, and apparently I never will. The only reason I read this book in the first place is because it sounded similar to a book called the Dark Life, which I actually truly enjoyed. It was nothing like that. The world-building was nonexistent and the explanations for character’s actions were stupid.

After reading this book, I wanted to throw it away and forget I ever wasted time on that plotless, interest-less, talent-less excuse for literature. Honestly, you’d think publishers would figure out that things need to be of high quality before they sell it.

The story line was swamped with mediocrity, the romance was confusing and unrealistic, the characters had to be purposefully bad because no one could do that accidentally, and the overall book gave me a raging headache. But hey, it’s kind of my fault right? I should’ve just stopped reading, but stubborn me wanted to finish that God-awful book. I don’t know why, but I did. Well, I’m never doing that again. 

Afterworlds Review

Afterworlds by Scott Westerfeld

Title: Afterworlds

Author: Scott Westerfeld

Series: None

Publisher: Simon Pulse

Publication Date: September 23, 2014

Genre: Fantasy; Contemporary; Supernatural; Realistic Fiction; Young Adult

Pages: 599

Format: Hardcover

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Darcy Patel has put college and everything else on hold to publish her teen novel, Afterworlds. Arriving in New York with no apartment or friends she wonders whether she's made the right decision until she falls in with a crowd of other seasoned and fledgling writers who take her under their wings… 

Told in alternating chapters is Darcy's novel, a suspenseful thriller about Lizzie, a teen who slips into the 'Afterworld' to survive a terrorist attack. But the Afterworld is a place between the living and the dead and as Lizzie drifts between our world and that of the Afterworld, she discovers that many unsolved - and terrifying - stories need to be reconciled. And when a new threat resurfaces, Lizzie learns her special gifts may not be enough to protect those she loves and cares about most.

Ohmygod, this book was so bad. Soooo bad. Like, really, really painful. Honestly, how I even finished it I have no idea.

I’m not even going to rewrite the summary. I really do not feel like reliving it.

It’s almost like Westerfeld couldn’t exactly decide between two stories: one, a paranormal romance about a girl who can pass into the Underworld, and two, a young author learning to “discover herself,” so he smooshed them together and called it a book. Too bad that both were absolutely awful.

I’ll start with the paranormal story, aka the fake story that was serving as a fake manuscript. It was actually the lesser of the two horrible evils because this one actually had a plot line. You’re probably thinking, “But wait, don’t all published stories at least have a discernable plot line?” I was once like you, all naïve in thinking that publishers would at least make sure their book had some plot to it, but oh contraire, my dear reader, that apparently is not a requirement. This one did however have a sliver of a conflict and just a bit of a standard plot line. And that is the only good thing I can say about it. Throughout the entirety of this book, all the main character’s fellow author friends kept saying how good her story was and how creative and how amazing. Lies. All of them. The characters left much to be wanted and the story line was utterly atrocious. The world building was virtually nonexistent and did Westerfeld forget how to write dialogue? And even if I wanted to like it, I couldn't because I was being constantly interrupted and reminded that what I was reading was in fact not a real story. How am I supposed to submerse myself in a story when I know it's fake? I’ve read Westerfeld before, and I once was a huge fan of his. I really liked Uglies and The Leviathan series, but this book? He would’ve been better off just not writing it.

Now for the realistic fiction part. Oh god. There were parts in this book where I just all together skipped these sections because I could not stand the main character. She was whiny and did nothing to help herself. And what about using all of your money from a manuscript (that sucks by the way, read above) and spending it on living in New York City instead of college is smart in any way? Seriously. How stupid is this character? And news flash, if you’re going to write a story, you might want to make sure that the story has a plot! Plot is important. Like, really important, and it does not exist here. There was literally no conflict. Absolutely none. I would’ve gotten the same effect if I had read a story about a deer skipping across a field. I was bored out of my mind, and I really saw no point in reading Afterworlds. If this story, no…book (there were no story elements whatsoever, so it really wasn’t a story now was it?) is based on Westerfeld’s real experiences of being published (although I doubt it by how ridiculously unrealistic it is), I feel bad for Westerfeld, and I also don’t see any reason why he should share with us his incredibly boring tale of publishing.  

Overall, two stories were shoved together in a haphazard fashion and without any consideration for the individual stories themselves. The cost was the quality of both stories, and the result was a book I would recommend to no one ever. Let’s just say I wish I had never picked up this horrifying excuse for a book. 

The Eye of Minds Review

The Eye of Minds by James Dashner

Title: The Eye of Minds

Author: James Dashner

Series: The Mortality Doctrine #1

Publisher: Delacorte Books

Publication Date: October 8, 2013

Genre: Science Fiction; Young Adult

Pages: 308

Format: Hardback
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Michael is a gamer. And like most gamers, he almost spends more time on the VirtNet than in the actual world. The VirtNet offers total mind and body immersion, and it’s addictive. Thanks to technology, anyone with enough money can experience fantasy worlds, risk their life without the chance of death, or just hang around with Virt-friends. And the more hacking skills you have, the more fun. Why bother following the rules when most of them are dumb, anyway?

But some rules were made for a reason. Some technology is too dangerous to fool with. And recent reports claim that one gamer is going beyond what any gamer has done before: he’s holding players hostage inside the VirtNet. The effects are horrific—the hostages have all been declared brain-dead.Yet the gamer’s                                                                                  motives are a mystery.

The government knows that to catch a hacker, you need a hacker.
And they’ve been watching Michael. They want him on their team.
But the risk is enormous. If he accepts their challenge, Michael will need to go off the VirtNet grid. There are back alleys and corners in the system human eyes have never seen and predators he can’t even fathom—and there’s the possibility that the line between game and reality will be blurred forever.

I hate writing bad reviews. I really do. I hate reading them and I hate writing them. I don’t think it’s fair to the book, because for every book there is at least one person out there who will love it. I least one person will enjoy reading its contents, and what if, that person destined to love that book reads a bad review? They might never find each other! The book’s soul mate will never find the book they were meant to love.

Okay, maybe it doesn’t happen exactly like that, but you get my point.

Just because one person hated the book doesn’t mean others will. It’s a singular opinion and everyone won’t have that same opinion. So I just want to say right now, that this is a bad review. Well, not literally a bad review–just a review about a book that I didn’t like. Even though I didn’t like it, a lot of other people did. Do not vow to never read, look at, or think about this book. Just consider my and other people’s opinions. Who knows? You may love it. But like every other book you pick up, you may also hate it.

Let’s get one thing straight: I love James Dashner as an author. I think any person who can write a book as brilliant as The Maze Runner is and always will be a genius. It is one of all-time favorites. And don’t even get me started on Dylan O’Brien. Can I just say BEST CASTING EVER! Anyway, this book hasn’t made me change my opinion of him. It just wasn’t my kind of book.

You know when you read those books that make you feel like you should be put in a psychiatric ward, your mind is so messed up after reading it? The Eye of Minds did that to me. It’s like there was no limit on what could happen, so the weirdest, most crazy, will-play-with-your-mind things occurred.  And it seemed like James Dashner was trying to tell me something with every insane event. Like there was a symbolism to everything, but I was wearing an eye patch on both eyes, so I blind to any other meaning. I was so confused and my head was starting to hurt by about page 230. I wanted to get this book but I. Just. Didn’t.

And the ending! Oh, the ending! If all the other pages of the book sent my head spinning, then the end nearly unscrewed my head from my neck. Talk about mind boggling.

I didn’t like this book. At all. I didn’t get it. But maybe you will. I sorry to say, that this is just one of those one-star book for me.