Alright, so I don't write reviews all that much. This is my first ever on Goodreads (Hi Goodreads people!) but I must insist here. If only because I see so many five and four star reviews that I'm thinking something must be wrong with me. I liked the first book. Really really liked it. The best piece of the first book was Varen, and then a bit of Isobel and Varen's interactions, but mostly Varen.
This book. This book. Why oh why, this book?
I finished it, just so everyone knows. I kept going and going and hoped that somewhere we'd find plot. Oh! We need to get to Baltimore to go see Reynolds! Alright, heck yeah, let's go. I love Reynolds. Totally on board.
Page one hundred. Alright, well, really slow start, but BALTIMORE! Ah yeah, Reynolds.
Page three hundred. Why am I still caring about Isobel being whiny? Oh, wait, I'm not. We're still going to Baltimore? Why aren't we at Baltimore yet? What have I been reading?
And that answer, my dear new Goodreads friends, is filler. What I have been reading is so much filler I could have shipped my fragile Christmas presents in it safely, with a bit left over if I felt adventurous enough to send New Year's Eve presents.
That's it! For a 429 page book, we have just the one plot line with really no subplots that make it harder to achieve. Yeah, her dad gets suspicious. I get it. I got on page thirty, I still got it on page three hundred. We get it, family is suspicious. Check that off your list of things you've shown me, Ms. Creagh.
But there wasn't much to make the trip harder. We know she's going to go to Baltimore early on so there's no tension really left. Pinfeathers is around to be creepy and Brad makes his appearance, but it's just pretty much smooth sailing. Except that Isobel is depressed. And I mean Bella from New Moon depressed.
The entire book is just an exercise in Isobel being ridiculously depressed. Played way over the top for this reader who can stomach a lot of YA books with over the top depression. It's the meat of the book. All that filler? It's all depression. ALL OF IT
And Gwen? Call her the one line queen, because she doesn't really do much else in the book. In fact, let me discuss how much I dislike pretty much all the secondary characters. Gwen is only there for her humor and sarcasm. She's a plot device, and a pretty transparent one. Isobel's father actually redeems himself from Nevermore, but he only goes one gear 90% of the time, and that's suspicious. I don't know anything about Isobel's mother. Not one thing. Danny is a little better, but very forgettable.
Oh! And villains? Forget it. There's none. Well, there's some, but they're all only marginally creepier than my stuffed animals. Except for Bruce. Bruce is a fierce stuffed shark that would devour Lilith.
Remember the two best pieces of Nevermore? Varen and Varen's interactions with Isobel? Nope. HA! That's not happening. Varen doesn't show up really until page 416 really, unless you count Pinfeathers, and I don't. Not really.
So we've got a real lack of plot, filler galore, no secondary characters, Isobel's crying herself to sleep over a papercut, Varen's stuck in an alternate dimension, and no villains. Right. Okay.
The ending.
I'm not going to spoil it. Not even in a spoiler. But it's so far out there, so far away from what we know of Varen, that I can't. I just can't.
Two stars because the writing wasn't atrocious enough to make me want to burn it.
