This is yet another firstie in a series, which I doubt I'll be reading since I'm not a series fan and this novel turned me off not because of the 'super powers' (read: psychic powers - there's no Captain Marvel or Superman here!), but because there was far too much YA girl with stars in her eyes for my taste. Had that been excluded, this would have been a better book, but when you have a nineteen or twenty year old behaving like a thirteen year old in front of a guy, I'm yelling, "Check please, I need to leave!"
It's not that I'm claiming there are no females (or males for that matter) who behave or react like this, but does it have to be de rigeur in most every YA novel? It's pathetic, and the worst part about it is that it robs your main charcter of her agency.
I completely lost faith in Chloe's ability to "man" up when the big danger arrives because she'd proven herself unyieldingly, perennially, and totally inept, immature, juvenile, weak and pathetic in every scene, and in most of those scenes, she's not concerned about her "super power" - which is just a form of clairvoyance, not what you'd normally consider a super power. Her obsession with Ethan seriously derails the story and robs it of it;s power.
This was supposed to be a story of two young women joining forces to defeat an evil, and that prospect is what really lured me in, but one of the womn doesn't even show up until midway through the novel - right at the point where I lost patince with it, tiring of this assinine and badly-written 'romance" between Chloe and Ethan.
What the story should have been about is Chloe learning to control her power with Etha thrown-in if you must, but once he showed up, the story became completely derailed and was no longer a slightly problematic but nonetheless interesting story. Instead it was almost entirely about the dumbass romance. This is really a Harlequin romance novel, not a sci-fi or super powers book.
The book is also a cheat because it does not have an ending. Being part of a series, it can only ever be a prologue and you have to buy more books to actually get a story. I don't do prologues, especially not rip-off ones like this one is, so I've been given to understand. The grand finale - the battle agaisnt the evil doesn't evne happen here. There have to be more books before you get to the end. To me this is a form of bait and switch. It's inexcusable and mercenary. It's really blackmail. "Hey, you took my book for free! In return I've kidnapped your finale. I won't release it until you buy more books!" I won't do that to my readers and I don't have much time for authors who do, which is why I get behind very very few series and almost no trilogies - especially YA trilogies.
This is also a story where for no rational reason, Chloe's powers start appearing more routinely the further we get into the novel. They grow, and the owner has to try and control them, but this came without any validity, and far too late. We're told that Chloe has had these powers all her life and they're just now sprouting big time and she's just now learning to handle them? It made no sense. It's liek those dumb-ass poltergeist stories where the evil spirit very kindly starts out treating vistors gently, playing with them, making them think they're imagining things, and slowly ramping up the ante until the finale. Why? Why would a demon or a poltergeist do this? Authors rarely offer any rationale for writing like this, and it makes no sense, which is one major reason why I have little time for horror stories.
The final problem here was that the writing itself writing wasn't always great. I read one review where the reviewer praised the quality of the writing and copy-editing, but I don't think he read very carefully. Either that or he knows not of what he speaks, because I found problems. I read at one point: "A font of true knowledge." Um, that should be 'fount'. I guess one could have a font, but it really doesn't work.
In another part, I read, "The more we listen to our intuition, the stronger it becomes. Trust in your power, act on it, and it will grow stronger" I doubt that the hard-working contributors to Wikipedia would appreciate that, which is claimed as a quote but is apparently an outright lie. The author claims it's taken from wikipedia (or more accurately has a character make that claim), but not only does it not sound like something the overseers there would allow an entry to get away with, it doesn't appear anywhere on the Wilkipedia entry for Intuition. I checked.
At another point I was surprised to learn from this author that English is not a language! I read:
Classes dragged interminably on Friday. Chloe struggled to pay attention during the review lecture in her English class, determined to do well on her test the following week. Spanish was easy, at least. Languages had always come easy for her.All languages save for her native one apparently! Or maybe you think that her English class isn't really, at a fundamental level, teaching her to speak, understand, and appreciate good English?
I read later, "She'd yet to declare a major and her advisor was losing patience with her" Seriously? Because that always happens. Advisors hound and terrorize students. Yeah! A bit further on, I read in reference to Ethan, "Every time she looked at him now, flashes of the vision came to mind. It wasn't a good thing. Her heart pounded. Her palms sweated." What, is Chloe thirteen?
I'm sorry but the less-than-readable writing style, the goofs, and the fact that this isn't a complete story, all turned me off something I had initially looked forward to reading. I can't commend this. Instead, I condemn the poor writing and poor charcterizations as well as the bait and switch.
