Nyx Book Reviews

fantasy ♥ paranormal ♥ horror ♥ science-fiction

YA Mini-Reviews #1

Title: Find Me (Find Me #1)
Author: Romily Bernard
Published September 24th 2013 by HarperTeen

Find Me is a young-adult thriller about a girl from a messed up family that tries to find out who killed one of her childhood friends. Although I quite liked this idea of a more gritty kind of thriller featuring a female main character that hacks for a living, the execution wasn’t great. The book was quite decent, but I feel like I’ve read this story before. The hacking part is incredibly bland and is only mentioned in the background, and the romance, though believable, felt very icky to me. The explanation of the killer didn’t sit right with me either, and I felt like this wasn’t the way humans act and evolve.

Find Me was an easy read, but not very memorable. It reminded me of a less poignant and heart-breaking Mind Games.

Rating: 2 Stars

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*****

Title: Ghost Flower
Author: Michele Jaffe
Published April 12th 2012 by Razorbill

Ghost Flower has a lot going on. We have a girl impersonating another girl, a brother and sister up to no good, a dysfunctional rich family, and a ghost leaving cryptic messages. This mash up of contemporary, thriller, and paranormal worked really well, and resulted in a fast-paced intriguing story-line.

Now, I’ve had this problem so many times I hardly blame a book for it any more, but I kinda already knew how the fork sat in the handle, as we say in the Netherlands. Solving the big mystery of a book before the big revelation sucks, because it takes away a lot of steam in the story. Now it wasn’t too bad, because I hadn’t figured out everything, but I did for about eighty percent.

What I liked best about Ghost Flower were the familial relationships and the way Eve interacted with all Aurora’s old friends. There is this constant getting to know each other/trying to figure out what someone’s ulterior motives are thing going on that was really interesting.

Rating: 4 Stars

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*****

Title: House of Ivy & Sorrow
Author: Natalie Whipple
Published April 15th 2014 by HarperTeen

I love witches, and House of Ivy & Sorrow did a great job of satisfying my magic cravings. Jo comes from a long family of witches. Some witches get killed by some mysterious Curse – a spell that kills witches slowly and gruesomely. Jo’s mom was killed in this way as well. And now the person that Cursed her mom is coming after Jo and her Grandmother too…

Age-wise House of Ivy & Sorrow does feel like a young YA book, especially at the beginning. The main characters are around seventeen, and at first I felt like they behaved rather like fourteen year olds. Throughout the story this impression faded, and there was plenty of darkness to keep me interested. Quite a few people have complained about the lack of depth and gloom. I really enjoyed the way a light, almost chick-lit like romance was incorporated into the story. House of Ivy & Sorrow is kind of like Sweet Valley High set in a small town with magic. The magic system relies on sacrifice in exchange for spells, sometimes a hair, eye sight – or bigger sacrific like finger-nails or limbs. It completely gross to read about someone voluntarily ripping their finger-nail out to create a spell, but some part of me also completely loved that.

Rating: 4 Stars

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