Rating: WARTY!
My only other experience of this author was Dream of Me which I did not like at all, and while this one is better than that, it ultimately suffers from the same problems that one did. I at least made it to page 100 of this 286 page ebook. It was moderately entertaining for a while, but it was very slow-moving and there was that same problem of the main male character demanding ownership of the main female one, who becomes pretty much a wilting violet whenever she's in his presence. I guess his super-power is sucking out women's intellect and replacing it with a 'bitch-in-heat' mentality. I'm sorry, but it's pathetic, and it cheapens the female character inexcusably.
The main male wasn't in it until close to page 100 which explains how I made it that far. Had he shown up earlier with his control freak ways and shitty attitude, I would have ditched this novel correspondingly earlier. What is it with YA authors, especially female ones, in their psychotic implication that the more special a woman is, the more abusive and possessive her 'soul partner' must be? There's something seriously wrong with that kind of thinking. Any self-respecting female character would want to kick someone like him in the balls.
The story is of a girl named Tara who is naturally in her last year of high-school, because why not? Since it's a YA special snowflake novel, obviously the unbreakable rule is that both of Tara's parents are dead. She lives with a foster mom who is essentially non-existent, because that's how it is in these books. Nothing new here. What was somewhat new was Tara's best friend, named Shelley, and I adored this character. It seems to be my fate in all-too-many YA novels to despise the main character and adore her BF. That was the case here. Shelley was a breath of fresh air and a badly-needed antidote to the anal and boring Tara.
It's tempting to say I would have loved a novel about Shelley, but perhaps it would have been too much to have that kind of no-filter intensity being front and center for a whole novel. Clearly Shelley is based on Aubrey Plaza. That said, her think-it-speak-it approach to life was far less annoying than was Tara's endless correction, contradiction, and commentary in relation to Shelley's straight forward habits. This is after they'd known each other for three years so you'd think there'd be some accommodation and adaptation, but no. Shelley has to be the best friend ever to put up with Tara, not the other way round, as the author would have it.
This novel buys into the trope that this YA girl has to have a love triangle because that's so original, so there are two guys, who really ought to simply have been named Nice and Nasty. Barf. It also has it that there are only four elements, and Tara is probably a master of all four since she's so perfect. That's just a guess. The 'good guys' of the earth element have been stalking her for years, spying on her without telling her a single word about who she is, without educating her in the least, or helping her along, or warning her that people will be after her. Jerks. Perhaps because Tara is, for reasons unexplained at the point where I quit, physically invulnerable to injury, they're dumb enough to think she can't be seduced to the dark side. I dunno.
They only make an attempt to recruit her at the school's job fair where this stalker dude Jax is dishonestly posing as a member of a geological exploration group, and he tries to get her interested in working for the company. He gives her no hint of who she is. This is also where we meet Elias Creed. Seriously? Elias Creed? I about barfed at that name and almost quit reading right there. The idiotically-named Elias is an assistant to Jax and he immediately becomes possessive and controlling of Tara. Since this is YA, she sees nothing at all wrong with this, gets no bad vibes about him, and has no fears for a potential future with a control freak of a partner. Quite the contrary. I lost all respect for Tara. Not that there was much to lose by this point.
Now about that sad little cover! It's tempting to think it was designed by a guy, but it was actually done by a woman with the tongue-twisting name of Kelsey Kukal-Keeton who from what I've seen seems to have made a career out of photographically rendering young woman as sex toys. I know authors don't really have a say in the cover, but the one on this novel is appallingly inaccurate and outright stupid. The girl - correction, woman - in it looks to be twice the main character's age, and she's dressed completely unlike how Tara dresses even when Tara dresses up! Appropriately though, this is a cover worthy of a brain-dead romance novel. Unless we're supposed to understand from the cover that this novel actually is merely a sad little romance story merely masquerading as fantasy? The cover was pathetic and both the author and photographer should be ashamed of it.
But page 100 is where I quit because the stupid was getting far too ripe for my sensitivities. I cannot commend an unoriginal and downright abusive novel like this that would have it that women are chattel for controlling guys and there's nothing wrong with that. I'm done with this author.
