Genre: Publication.Date June 11, 2013 Pages: 422 (ARC), Published By: HarperTeen Website Kate Karyus Quinn Another Little Piece on Goodreads My review copy: ARC won through contest on Epic Reads
Where to get:
The spine-tingling horror of Stephen King meets an eerie mystery worthy of Sara Shepard's Pretty Little Liars series in Kate Karyus Quinn's haunting debut.
On a cool autumn night, Annaliese Rose Gordon stumbled out of the woods and into a high school party. She was screaming. Drenched in blood. Then she vanished.
A year later, Annaliese is found wandering down a road hundreds of miles away. She doesn't know who she is. She doesn't know how she got there. She only knows one thing: She is not the real Annaliese Rose Gordon.
Now Annaliese is haunted by strange visions and broken memories. Memories of a reckless, desperate wish . . . a bloody razor . . . and the faces of other girls who disappeared. Piece by piece, Annaliese's fractured memories come together to reveal a violent, endless cycle that she will never escape—unless she can unlock the twisted secrets of her past.
(Goodreads)
On a cool autumn night, Annaliese Rose Gordon stumbled out of the woods and into a high school party. She was screaming. Drenched in blood. Then she vanished.
A year later, Annaliese is found wandering down a road hundreds of miles away. She doesn't know who she is. She doesn't know how she got there. She only knows one thing: She is not the real Annaliese Rose Gordon.
Now Annaliese is haunted by strange visions and broken memories. Memories of a reckless, desperate wish . . . a bloody razor . . . and the faces of other girls who disappeared. Piece by piece, Annaliese's fractured memories come together to reveal a violent, endless cycle that she will never escape—unless she can unlock the twisted secrets of her past.
(Goodreads)
His words were a grenade. You could see the shock waves spreading out from the epicenter, hitting people who had quietly gathered around us. There were gasps of shock. A shriek of anger. More than a few giggles. But the main detonation was inside of me.
The memory stopped abruptly. Like a plug had been pulled. The world that replaced it felt less real, and somehow not as substantial in comparison.
I sat on the steps learning the poems. Rote repetition had quickly turned a challenge like the backwards ABCs into nothing but background noise, no more distracting than the hum of the refrigerator. The poems, though, became more insistent with every reading.
His body was hidden, seemingly being eater, while his long limbs stuck out in all directions jerking and twitching as if in his final death throes.
We are all of us not quite human, but I am on a different path and must follow it.
I am now the victim of an over hyped book.
It's not that it wasn't good, it just wasn't what I was expecting. I was expecting to be scared - as reviews had stated I would be - I wasn't. I was expecting to be confused about what was going on - I wasn't. I was expecting some huge plot to blow me away - I wasn't.
After having been missing for a few months, Annaliese mysteriously shows up outside a trailer park in a completely different state from the one she lived in. She has no reconciliation about what happened to her or where she's been. It's almost a form of amnesia as she can remember somethings - facts and the like - but nothing about herself. She's so convinced that she isn't Annaliese that she refers to her parents as "the mom" and "the dad."
Throughout the novel, Annaliese starts having memories and remembering who she is and what exactly happened to her. It's an interesting new concept - that I can't get too much into with out spoiling it - that I found to be intriguing. I also wasn't nearly as confused as some people said they had been. Once the truth was revealed, I was able to keep up quite well. I understood what was going on, what had happened, and the paranormal aspect that Quinn was introducing.
You can't help but feel for the mom and the dad. They have their daughter back after all this time, but you can tell they know something isn't right, but try to ignore it. I really liked the character of Dex and thought he was a nice addition - even with a hint of instalove between him and Annaliese. Well, I shouldn't stay instalove, but something between instalove and instalust. Dex was very willing to do things for Annaliese that only somebody in love would do, but I don't recall "love" actually being said between the two. Anyway, I was able to get behind the relationship as these two were both a little... special. They had their unique abilities that allowed them to connect and depend on one another in their time of need.
I didn't feel Annaliese was a terribly strong character, but the more she put the puzzle pieces together, the stronger she became. She truly showed her strength in the last half of the book when she began to stand up for herself and protect those around her.
The narration was a little on the detached side. Not only is Annaliese was seemingly detached from those around her, but she is detached from us as well. I didn't feel so much as I was in the story (as I usually do), but observing it from afar. I did like the poems scattered throughout the novel that Annaliese discovered, especially since they were relevant to things that she would remember or events happening around her. Adding poems in such a fashion could be a tricky thing, but Quinn did a very nice job adding these special touches.
I'm so torn. I liked the book, but after having read all these glowing reviews, I was expecting to be blown away and I wasn't. So I'm also a little bummed out. I think it's definitely worth the read, as it's a unique idea/concept, but don't go into expecting to fall in love.
No comments:
Post a Comment