Entangled by Cat Clarke -- Review

Entangled 

by Cat Clarke

Synopsis (courtesy of Goodreads):

The same questions whirl round and round in my head:
What does he want from me?
How could I have let this happen?
AM I GOING TO DIE?

17-year-old Grace wakes up in a white room, with a table, pens and paper - and no clue how she got here.

As Grace pours her tangled life onto the page, she is forced to remember everything she's tried to forget. There's falling hopelessly in love with the gorgeous Nat, and the unravelling of her relationship with her best friend Sal. But there's something missing. As hard as she's trying to remember, is there something she just can't see?

Grace must face the most important question of all. Why is she here?

A story of dark secrets, intense friendship and electrifying attraction. 

Review:

First off, I LOVE LOVE LOVE the cover of this book. The pose, the hair color - that's actually what initially attracted me to the book (as well as the synopsis). When I started the book, it kind of just throws you into the story, so I felt a bit lost and disoriented for a few chapters, but then things were clicking and it then became easy to catch onto the pattern of how the story is told -- flashes of Grace and Ethan in the white room "prison" and Grace's life and activities around the time she met a fine young chap named Nat. 

I thought Grace's character was rather dense as from very early on in the story, you could tell there was something funky going on (red flags everywhere) between her new boyfriend Nat and her best friend Sal -- all the body language described, the awkward looks and conversations -- yet Grace totally does not take notice of this at all... that is until she writes her story and at Ethan's urging slowly realizes the big truths of her story. 

I really did not understand Ethan's character, nor why she thought she knew him, when they never mentioned why she thought that - was it someone from her past, some stranger she came across at one point in time in her life - it just never really addresses him, other than his ultimate role in Grace's story.

While this is listed as a YA, I would have to say it's for the older YA crowd - lots of swear words (though the British ones hehe), LOTS of talk and descriptions of sex and sexual experiences, and the behavioral issue of cutting. 

Cutting. The theme of cutting in this book reminded me a lot of "Hunger" and "Winter Girls," where the lead characters in that book are OCD/ obsessed with their body image and starving themselves. In Entangled, Grace releases her stress and depression by cutting. Having known real-life people who have had issues with cutting, it was interesting to get Grace's perspective of her fascination and compulsion with it. I don't recall her ever mentioning pain and its association to her cutting, which I thought was odd. Odd in the sense that, from what I know of cutters' behavior, the big reason they cut is to FEEL IT, in order to overwhelm their other feelings of anxiety, stress, depression, etc...and sometimes for self-punishment. 

It was an ok, a lil' sub-par, read overall. The pace was ok, once the rhythm of flipping back and forth between Grace's memories and Grace's experience in the white room was established. I also did not like the ending. I do not like that it left Grace's story ... unfinished; I would have rather had a sad ending or a happy ending. Instead, it just kind of ends with "blah ........"

Rating: 2 / 5 Stars

Unearthly by Cynthia Hand

Unearthly

by Cynthia Hand

Synopsis (courtesy of GoodReads):

In the beginning, there's a boy standing in the trees. . .

Clara Gardner has recently learned that she's part angel. Having angel blood run through her veins not only makes her smarter, stronger, and faster than humans (a word, she realizes, that no longer applies to her), but it means she has a purpose, something she was put on this earth to do. Figuring out what it is, though, isn't easy.

Her visions of a raging forest fire and an alluring stranger lead her to a new school in a new town. When she meets Christian, who turns out to be the boy of her dreams (literally), everything seems to fall into place--and out of place, at the same time. Because there's another guy, Tucker, who appeals to Clara's less angelic side.

As Clara tries to find her way in a world she no longer understands, she encounters unseen dangers and choices she never thought she'd have to make--between honesty and deciet, love and duty, good and evil. When the fire from her vision finally ignites, will Clara be ready to face her destiny?

Review:

The premise of the book was a little confusing – with these angel half-breeds and quarter-angel descendents having a set job to do as their destiny, at some point during their early years (well that’s what it seemed like for the characters involved). Granted, the storyline put an interesting twist on the hot paranormal books focusing on angels, I found it to be not a very enticing or engaging read. I will, however, say that it was nice to have a book involving angels and their offspring, and NOT have references to nephilim come up really.

I felt there was a lack of character development in Clara and Christian, though we do learn a lot about Tucker as the story progresses. And Clara’s mom – her character bugged the heck out of me with her being all “oh sweetie, you have to figure it out on your own, all in good time,” even though her mom should be the one helping her through this transition into her powers and foretold destiny, and not her friend Angela.

Another aspect of the book that I did not appreciate all that much was how much of a cliffhanger the end of the book leaves the reader. The ending really does not resolve much of anything, but rather poses and creates more questions and dilemmas than concluding or solving the issues already posed in the book. For instance, Chrisitian and his gig, Clara and her destined love-or-chosen love, and Angela & her Italian bf & what Angela’s been learning in Italy.

With the writing style being very basic and uncomplicated, as well as very little sexual tensions or adult type of situations actually being addressed in the book, I think this would be an alright book for pre-teen, young YA readers to read as a paranormal, specifically angel-topic supernatural novel to read, to enter into the genre of YA paranormal.

 


Rating: 3.5 / 5 Stars

The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan

The Forest of Hands and Feet (Book 1)

by Carrie Ryan

** spoiler alert ** Life inside the village is the only life Mary knows. It's not as if she can go out of the village. It is fenced all around, constantly guarded, and for good reason. Outside the village, beyond the fences, lies the forest of hands and feet. Within the forest, danger and death lurk in the forest - the Unconsecrated. The Unconsecrated are zombies; things that were once human, somehow got infected from an Unconsecrated, dies and then comes back to life as an Unconsecrated themselves. And the Unconse ...more Life inside the village is the only life Mary knows. It's not as if she can go out of the village. It is fenced all around, constantly guarded, and for good reason. Outside the village, beyond the fences, lies the forest of hands and feet. Within the forest, danger and death lurk in the forest - the Unconsecrated. The Unconsecrated are zombies; things that were once human, somehow got infected from an Unconsecrated, dies and then comes back to life as an Unconsecrated themselves. And the Unconsecrated thirst for human flesh and blood.

At the start of the book, you get the sense that prior to this, things have been relatively "normal" in Mary's life and her experience within the village. She has now come of age in the village, and can be courted. Though she wishes Travis to begin courting her, his brother, Harry, instead begins to show her his interest in her - well, almost. With the lose of her mother to the Unconsecrated, life for Mary has become difficult, to say in the least. She is left with few options now that both her parents are gone, lost in the forest and Unconsecrated. Her options are: she can stay with her older brother and his wife, she can have a boy officially begin courting her, or she could stay with the Sisters in the Cathedral. Things do not go in Mary's favor - her brother blames her for allowing their mother to intentionally get infected, as well as dealing with his wife having a miscarriage, he banishes her from what used to be there family house but now was his house. And with no one coming to "claim" and court her, she is left with no choice but to live within the Cathedral and be prepped to become a Sister. Her visits with the injured Travis and the appearance of a girl from Outside of the village make Mary begin to question what's out there, beyond the forest, and why the Sisters are keeping so many secrets.

Not long later, the mysterious girl, Gabrielle, disappears from her room in the cathedral, but Mary spots her - on the other side of the fence, an Unconsecrated. Soon after, a massive hoard of Unconsecrated breach the fences and go after any villagers that they can get to - to bite them and eat them. Through quick thinking, Mary lead Harry, her now betrothed, and Jacob, a little boy Harry narrowly saved from the Unconsecrated to a gated path that Mary has discovered Gabrielle came from. The only others who have escaped and also have gotten to this fenced path are Travis and Cass, Mary's best friend, and her brother and his wife. Though she is driven by her mother's stories about the past and the existence of an ocean to find what's beyond the forest, Mary must decide whether to continue pursuing her goal of reaching the Ocean or find a way to survive in their new environment....


I was excited to read a YA book that was not about angels or vampires or werewolves, though I do love my share of them. The book is well written and the basis of the plot is very interesting, but I felt the need for more details - sudden events occur and then things continue on, and are only described in the briefest, most basic way. I also had issues connecting not only with Mary, but the other characters as well. You never really get a sense of any of them. Perhaps a bit more from Travis, but this is brief due to untimely events. By the end of the book, questions are still not answered. And I also did not like how impersonal and lack of feeling& detail deaths are. With the cliffhanger ending, the author is likely to continue with at least 2 more books. Will the unanswered questions be answered then? Or are we just going to get a whole new set of questions and problems ontop of the ones the end of the book leaves us with? I am undecided as to whether or not I will read the next book in the series.

Rating: 3/5 Stars