REVIEW: Closed Hearts by Susan Kaye Quinn

Closed Hearts by Susan Kaye Quinn
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

CAUTION: Long Review, Slight Spoiler

I really liked book 1 so I was excited when book 2 came out. Once I got my hands on it, I immediately read it. Wow, what a big disappointment book 2 turned out to be. The series was still well written, well edited, and fast-paced. So what was the problem with Closed Hearts, the YA novel of around 84,000 words? One word: Kira.

All the character development in book 1 that made Kira a kick-ass heroine was gone in book 2. Gone! She regressed back to her insecure, incompetent self. By the time she started kicking ass, it was too little too late and bam there was the ending.

The Beginning

The novel began with Kira working with her father to mindguard their rich client.The atmosphere was tense, the characters alert. The novel was off to a good beginning.

Till I read the first sign of trouble.

It had been a while since I’d tangled with another jacker, and I was out of practice. I hoped to stay that way.

Uh what? Does your client knows you're out of practice? Does he know you're putting his life at risk with your atrophy? You're a mindguard, Kira. You should not be out of practice.

Thus it didn't surprised me when Kira encountered a mindjacker and even though he was weak she had trouble confining him. She needed her father's help. It was also not a surprise that after the guy was caught her father directed Kira to go home.

Everyone Hates Mindjackers

Kira went home and then she went out to began her second job as a waitress.

At the diner, we learn people did not take the sudden public revelation of mindjackers from book 1 well. Everyone is a mindreader, but only a few are mindjackers. It's one thing to read minds, it's another thing entirely to control (or "jack" as the story terms it) minds. Things pretty much went as expected when a society discover a certain minority. Paranoia. Prejudice. Let's legislate segregation!

Thus introduced the villain, Senator Vellus. However, he wasn't a big problem for Kira yet. Her boyfriend Raf was.

Dude In Distress

After book 1, Kira's family moved away and lived under new identities. Apparently, they didn't move far away enough because Raf and his family came into the diner where Kira worked to her surprise. We soon learn Kira and Raf have been meeting secretly behind their parents' back.

I liked Raf but I thought it was one of the stupidest things Kira could have done by keeping in contact with Raf. She put her sickeningly sweet love for Raf ahead of everyone's safety.

Raf was only a mindreader and thus had no resistance to being jacked. He didn't even have any of those anti-mindjacking tools that were suddenly (and conveniently) invented in the past 8 months between book 1 and 2 to protect himself. Therefore, I was not at all surprised to learn Raf was jacked to trap Kira. The both of them were then kidnapped by returning villain, mindjacker clan leader Molloy.

In the entire story, Raf played no other role than as a dude in distress. He was always being knocked out and held hostage. It was painful watching Kira being her pathetic self as she do everything the antagonists demanded so they'll keep Raf alive as they "promised." Yes, because bad people keeps their promises. (sarcasm)

“Let Raf go.” I didn’t care that desperation crumpled my voice. “I’ll do whatever you want, just don’t hurt him.”

“Hurt him?” Julian stopped mid-chew. “I don’t think you quite understand the situation you’re in here.”

She sooooo didn't.

I pitied Raf. It was a WTF moment that Kira objected to others jacking Raf but she had little objection to jacking Raf herself. What kind of girlfriend was Kira that she had little scruple erasing her boyfriend's memories without his permission, even if she thought it was for a good reason. She was doing the things the mindjackers-hating bigots accused her and her kinds of doing.

At one point, I thought it was better for Raf to die than to go through any more crap because of Kira's incompetence. If Kira had stopped meeting Raf, they wouldn't be in this stupid situation that was the entire book 2: rescuing Raf from the bad guys.

Talk About Stupid

Kira got kidnapped (and Raf held hostage) because the rebel mindjackers needed her strong mindjacking talent — a talent she was totally rusty on — to break innocent mindjackers out of Kestrel's prison. FBI Agent Kestrel was the second returning villain from book 1. He was another mistake — beside Molloy — Kira made because had she killed or at least completely incapacitated him things wouldn't have been so shitty for her, for Raf, and for all the innocent mindjackers.

By shitty, I mean they were captured and experimented on. Though I will admit I was a little gleeful watching Kestrel experimenting on Kira. Even when she was being tortured, she still annoyed me with her incompetence.

“I’ll do whatever little demonstrations you want to prove it, but then you need to let us go—all of us.”

Kestrel never showed mercy and he wasn't going to start now. Was Kira so stupid that she didn't realize that her cooperation could possibly make thing worse? She had one of the most powerful minds in the world. If Kestrel could crack her mind, No One Will Be Safe.

I think maybe Kira was so mentally "talented" because she was literally that dense.

So frustrating it was for me to watch Kira failed again to kill Kestrel when she had the perfect opportunity to do so near the end of the novel. I could not believe she let her allies stopped her. Come on, the dude cruelly experimented on you all. Have some self-preservation instinct!

Mistakes after Mistakes

The plot had alot of action but it couldn't make it up for a pathetic protagonist. Kira got kidnapped three times. At least two of those times could have been avoided. Not meeting Raf for the 1st one. She should have at least scanned his mind and checked her surrounding before making out with him. Priorities, please! And not trusting strangers in a bad part of the town at night where everyone can jack your mind for the 2nd one. Seriously!

In a father-daughter talk, Kira didn't realize her father being an agent meant he could have killed people in the past. Her denseness astounded me. Did she not truly know what people in law enforcement do? Did she think her father carrying weapons and being all dangerous was just for look? Sweet Jesus Honeydews!

Speaking of weapons:

“It’s a fast-acting dart gun with four rounds, effective at more than one hundred meters,” he said. “You should be able to keep it hidden under your clothes, unless you’re patted down. Or did you want a more deadly weapon?”

It felt cold and plenty deadly in my hand. Anything more and I wasn’t sure I would be able to pull the trigger.

What, controlling people's mind isn't deadly? Really? Moreover, Kira should have demanded a more deadly weapon. They're breaking into what amounts to a dungeon where human experiments occur and shit. Four rounds is hardly enough, especially dart guns! Kira should have demanded a real gun, one with multiple rounds. When one is risking one's life, it's not the time to be queasy about arming oneself.

The one thing that got to me was Kira's lack of concern for her mother, Xander the changeling her family adopted, and her brother Seamus. I understood Kira's need to rescue Raf and herself because they were the ones in the most danger at the present. Nonetheless, once she knew her family's cover was blown she should have notified everyone so that they could find another safe place.

It was a big plot-hole. Kira was too occupied with Raf being held hostage that she forgot to realize she had other loved ones that could be potentially held hostage too. Quite frankly, I'm surprised they weren't. It was mind-boggling to see that her family didn't do anything to protect themselves once they realized their cover was no more. I was most disappointed with Kira's father who was supposed to be the smart one, being a competent agent and such, because he didn't take any measure to protect his family other than forming some sort of unholy alliance with Senator Vellus — the jury is still out on whether that was a smart move.

Things I Had Mixed Feelings About

To be honest, I didn't know what to make of the relationship between Senator Vellus between Kira's father. I'm not sure who was using who but it looked like Vellus had the upper hand.

In the middle of the story, there was an attempt to make another love triangle with Julian, another mindjacker clan leader. Fortunately, nothing ever came out of it. I liked Julian. I liked him enough that I won't have mind if Kira died in the middle of book 2 and the story started in his PoV.

Only one of three villains were completely defeated. I was satisfied with how that villain met his end, yet I was dissatisfied with how it was only him. I wished the story had at least two villains meeting their end.

The ending wasn't bad but it wasn't what I wanted. Kira started the mindjacker revolution in book 1. In book 2, she hardly care about it. To be fair, I understood her desire for a peaceful life after what happened in book 1. At the end of book 2, she was back on the revolution wagon. I didn't know what to make of it really.

In Conclusion

I rate Closed Hearts 2-stars for it was okay. I think book 2 would have been better if Raf was done away and Kira voluntarily help Julian with his goal. Rather Kira working in secret as a waitress, she could have been working as a mindjacker rebel, propelling the mindjacker revolution with Vellus as the main villain instead of a big distraction.

Readers who greatly enjoyed book 1 will mostly likely continue that degree of enjoyment in book 2. Readers who didn't or mildly enjoy book 1 will most likely not enjoy book 2. My recommendation: do read book 2 if you got the spare change and time. The novel is worth a read.

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REVIEW: Velveteen by Daniel Marks

Velveteen by Daniel Marks
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

CAUTION: Long Review

I thought the story of 110,000 words was going to be a bloody tale of revenge but it wasn't. The blurb was awfully misleading:

Velveteen aches to deliver the bloody punishment her killer deserves. And she's figured out just how to do it. She'll haunt him for the rest of his days.

Uh, no. Velveteen was actually about a bunch of angry, disillusioned dead people called Departurists who wanted out of purgatory and so they commit a series of terrorist acts in order to accomplish their goal. And somehow Velveteen the heroine got thrust into their war. The revenge plot at most was like 10% of the story; the rest was about the society in purgatory crumbling down.

The Beginning

The beginning was rather confusing. It took me a couple of pages before I got my anchor down. Then it took a few chapters before the main conflict finally started. Of course, it felt longer because I didn't know at the time the Departurists thing was the main conflict till halfway through the story.

The story started with Velveteen secretly haunting her killer and then returning back to purgatory before anyone finds out. Haunting is a big No-No because it causes shadowquakes in purgatory. I'm not completely sure why. Something about bad energy. Please excuse me for my inability to explain the story concepts because, frankly, the story didn't explain them clearly to me. I still have no idea what ashing and dimming is about except that ashing is good and dimming is bad... I think.

The World Building

The world building was sloppy.

Time was a strange thing when you were living in the same city as people who’d died hundreds of years ago and yesterday.

This was told, never showed. Told once or twice and completely forgotten about. Purgatory was about as strange as New York City, which is to say it was disappointing.

I have no idea why there were train stations in purgatory. All I recall was that it was where new souls arrive. Most of them anyway because some souls get lost which I don't know how exactly that could happen. It was never clearly explained why.

Moreover, the story hardly explained the Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory concepts. The characters in the world didn't even know for sure if there was a Heaven or Hell. The characters were expected to know they were in was purgatory because someone told them so.

On things the story did explain, it was explained late. I didn't know what the story referred to as "daylight" until way late in the story Velveteen said it was a term for the World of the Living. Couldn't she said that the first time she used the word?

The Characters

Velveteen, or Velvet as she prefer to be called, was the story's heroine. The story was told in 1st PoV from her side. From the blurb, I expected her to be a bad-ass but she never maintained that level. She was strong, but she was mostly unremarkable.

All the characters were unremarkable. It was difficult keeping track of them because the story threw out names and barely developed the characters. I'm writing my review a few weeks after I finished the story and I have forgotten most of the cast.

I remember Isadora because she was the mean girl. The story took place in purgatory, not in high school, but there she was. The mean girl. Like all mean girls, she provided an easy excuse to work in unnecessary drama between Velveteen and her love interest.

Speaking of the love interest, the guy was uninteresting. He was talented, he was handsome, he was nice, but overall he was uninteresting. So uninteresting I have to re-read the story to re-learn his name: Nick. I have nothing against the guy, I just couldn't understand his interest in Velveteen. At first I thought he mistook gratefulness for love because she rescued him. Yet, it was her team that rescued him. Velveteen barely contribute. I quickly saw the romance for what it was — instant love.

The Writing

I wish the writing was more straightforward. Some passages, including the dialogue, were written in a roundabout way which jarred my reading pace. This did not help at all with my comprehension of the story in addition to the poorly explained story concepts.

The Storytelling

The pacing was kind of slow. The action and suspense, it was all mildly compelling and somewhat insufficient. There were times I felt like I had to work to finish the story. And I admit it, there were a few parts I skimmed because nothing was really happening.

In Conclusion

It'll be brutal . . . and awesome.

It was not brutal and it was not awesome. My main gripe against the book was that it mislead me to think it was a tale of revenge when it wasn't. It was about the Departurists.

Personally, I thought the Departurists despite their horrific acts of terrorism had the right idea to question their afterlife and to question the purpose of purgatory. These questions were never answered in the book and we can only hope they will be in book 2. The story ended with the main conflict resolved and that was it. There was no aftermath.

I rate Velveteen 2-stars for it was okay. I didn't think purgatory could be dull, but it was.

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REVIEW: The Vicious Deep by Zoraida Córdova

The Vicious Deep by Zoraida Córdova
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

CAUTION: Long Review.

The Vicious Deep begins with Tristan on lifeguard duty at the beach when suddenly a freak wave hits. While everyone runs for their lives, Tristan races to rescue a drowning victim thinking he could make it. Alas, he didn't. Soon, Tristan washes up on shore and taken to the hospital.

People say a near-death experience can be life changing, but with Tristan it reached to a whole new level.

Tristan learned he was lost for three days at sea and was the only survivor of the freak wave. Yet he was mostly tired and ready for things to get back to normal. His parents agreed and quickly took him home from the hospital. Barring a few odd occurrences, things seem fine.

Till chapter 10.

After getting a fishtail for the bottom half of his body, Tristan learned he's a merman, his mother's an ex-mermaid, they're merfolks royalty which made him a Prince.

I can forget all that. But of all the creatures in my mom’s fairy-tale books, she had to go and be the girliest? Come on!

The Writing

TVD had less than 87000 words and was written in present tense, making the action forefront. Imagery was driven by characters' action; character development was driven by dialogue. On occasions, the prose was slightly flowery.

Speaking of flowery, the characters cursed using the "mother-flower" euphemism. Fuck, shit, and damn were part of the vernacular but I didn't understand why a variation of fuck would be euphemized. I thought it was silly and stupid.

The Characters

+++ Tristan

TVD was told in 1st Pov from Tristan's side. Right from the start, Tristan was not your usual YA protagonist...because he's popular.

The YA genre love its loner, its outcast, its "woe is me because I'm a freak and no one understand me" protagonist. Tristan had social skills and enjoyed being around people. In any other YA, he would be the jock love interest our ostracized heroine like because he's nice to her and dislike because his attention to her brings the the mean girls' attention.

Tristan is a swimming athlete and a lifeguard, always wearing a Speedo and being flirtatious. His one big flaw was that despite being a girl magnet Tristan treated girls in his relationship quite horribly. Yet it wasn't because he was naturally a jerk. I disliked how Tristan treated Mandy but I pitied him because for all his charm with girls, he couldn't get the one girl that mattered.

Tristan was in love with Layla — apparently since childhood — but he didn't how to properly deal with it.

+++ Layla

Layla is Tristan's love interest and his best friend since childhood. I liked how she refused to be relegated as Tristan's sidekick. She followed Tristan to find out why he has been so secretive and intended to protect him in case he needed help. She stuck with Tristan after learning his secret and sensibly forgave him for not telling her.

Far too often in YA the best friend would be mad at our protagonist in beginning, disappear in the middle of the story, and reappear at the end — sometime as a hostage or an antagonist. Layla was not like that; Layla was a strong character in her own rights.

+++ Tristan's Parents

TVD didn't suffer the Missing Parents Syndrome. Plus, the parents loved each other and their son Tristan. In short, they were genuinely a happy family. It was...unusual because in YA the protagonist's family are always unhappy or dead. Seriously.

Mr. Hart was like a geek while Mrs. Hart was like Ariel from Disney's The Little Mermaid because she had red hair and a hobby of collecting junks.

+++ Other Characters

Tristan's "cousins" Thalia and Kurt were funny. Thalia was carefree and mischievous while Kurt was haughty and magisterial; the two siblings were total opposite in personality. They made great sidekicks to Tristan (technically, they're his royal courtiers).

I even liked Gwen the mean mermaid princess. Turned out she was more than I initially thought because I found her meanness warranted. Hell, I would be mean too if I was stuck in her situation. Her family forced her to marry a spoiled merman prince and be happy with the asshole.

The other supporting characters such as Marty did not stand out and seem unimportant and unremarkable. The characters from the ship had a muddled introduction.

The World Building

TVD's world was filled with all sorts of supernatural, from vampires to fairies, but the book focused on merfolks. The book used Poseidon from Greek mythology as the basis for its merfolk world. The world building was one of the few unoriginal things about TVD because pretty much every mermaid YA use Poseidon.

The Plot

Tristan's grandfather was nearing his end so he wanted Tristan to replace him as king. However, his grandfather could not directly crown Tristan because the mer-people would revolt. A quest was put forth and Tristan — among other champions — must collect all three dispersed pieces of Poseidon's Trident from three of the five oracles to win the quest and ultimately become the Sea King.

The champions must locate the nomadic oracles, figure which one has the Trident piece, and win it from the oracle. Like any other quest to become king, anything goes and survival is part of the goal.

I expected the plot to be predictable and largely it was. Yet there were few twists and turns, such as Gwen, that caught me off guard. The book had some slow moments, but for the most part it was quick paced.

Things I Didn't Like

+++ Lack of Parental Involvement

I liked the presence of Tristan's parents in the story but I disliked how uninvolved they were in Tristan's quest. They should've fussed about Tristan trying to become the Sea King because 1) he's not an adult 2) he's ignorant of the supernatural world and its danger 3) he wasn't a trained Prince let alone a merman and 4) everyone will try to kill him so they could become king.

The only thing I recall the Harts fussing about was Nieve, the distant great-aunt who is crazy and evil and essentially the merfolk's version of the bogeyman. She showed up in Tristan's nightmares and she may be the series' Big Bad.

+++ The Awkward Romance

Another thing I dislike about TVD was the romance between Tristan and Layla. Their relationship could be summed up in one short sentence: it's complicated. I didn't think it needed to be that way.

I thought Tristan spent too much time thinking about Layla and not enough about his quest and his survival.

+++ The Ho-hum Hero

What mainly stopped me from rating TVD higher was how ho-hum Tristan was as a hero. There was a plot-hole of Tristan knowing how to fight bad mer-guys when he didn't know any martial art or have any fighting experience. All he had was a magical dagger, but it didn't make him a warrior.

Beside his magical dagger, his half-merman half-human special status, his look and charm with girl, Tristan didn't exhibit anything special that made him stand out as a hero. He didn't fully grasp the urgency of his quest, the weight of being a king, the secrecy of being a merman, and the danger of it all. Many times I wanted Tristan to stop and think about the depth of the situation.

In Conclusion

I rate TVD for 3 stars for I liked it. TVD may not have been original but it did lack much of the cliché that are prevalent in YA. The plot had some action and comedy, and the protagonist was believable as a teenage male.

I recommend TVD for readers looking for something different than your usual YA, readers wanting to jump on the mermaid YA bandwagon, and readers hoping for a light and decent YA read.

Memorable Quote

“Is there a way you can fix that? Make yourselves look different so that you don’t attract so much attention?”

“We do look different. We are glamoured,” Kurt says indignantly. “It’s a light spell to tone down our natural colors. We are no longer achingly beautiful. Now we’re just exceptionally beautiful.”

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REVIEW: Unraveling by Elizabeth Norris

Unraveling by Elizabeth Norris
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

CAUTION: Long Review, Spoilers

Unraveling was pitched as Before I Fall meets Fringe (source: PublishersWeekly). The book was similar to the TV show in many ways (for details, please check out Phoebe's review); the most notable one was how the two were about parallel universe. Yet, instead of Fringe Unrav' made many references to X-Files which I found odd. I liked the references but they didn't go beyond the characters jabbering some corny but cool quotes from X-Files. Quite a shame really because I would have enjoyed Unrav' more if Janelle used her X-Files-fu to figure out problems.

The connection to Before I Fall was tenuous. Both books killed the MC in the beginning of the story, but Unrav' killed the MC once while BIF killed the MC several times. Both books have teen girls as MC who are forcibly thrust into a situation beyond belief, but how the girls chose to approach the situation was entirely different. Samantha in BIF was obtuse and immature; she ultimately resigned to her fate. Janelle, OTOH, was clever and mature; she strove to live.

But I’m alive.
I’m alive.
More alive than I was before any of this happened.
Life is a fragile thing. Apparently the whole world is fragile too.
But it’ll beat on.
Because it has to.

Unlike Samantha, Janelle was not this character who was initially flawed to make for some easy character development.

The Cast

+++ Janelle the Heroine

With a little over 104,000 words, Unrav' was told in 1st PoV from Janelle's side. How Janelle dealt with the mean girls and how she broke up with Nick after realizing her feeling for Ben made her incredibly mature. I began to like Janelle once I read how involved she was in her father's FBI work. Janelle was a real go-getter. I liked how she was nosy and how she nosed into her father's work by secretly going through his files and computer. There were many times when she got over her head and her life went to ruins, but throughout it all she was grounded and determined to pull through.

My biggest complain about Janelle was that I wished she did less with the brandishing of her father's gun during her moments of "tell me everything you know now" and more with the shooting. Coincidentally, I read a recent novel Timeless where the MC also brandished her gun but in a manner more to my liking:

Alexia detested the very idea that she might have to actually use her gun...Still, even if all she intended to do was threaten, she might as well be able to fulfill that threat adequately. Alexia abhorred hypocrisy, especially when munitions were involved. (chapter 3)

I like to think if Janelle took a lesson from Alexia, the few but big tragedies that happened in the course of the story wouldn't have happened.

+++ Janelle's Family

For a workaholic, Mr. Tenner was a loving father. My favorite part about him was:

My dad chuckles. “Not yet, but don’t worry. I won’t give up. Hunting aliens is the reason I joined the FBI, after all.” This is actually not a lie. Of course, the truth is that there isn’t a unit that actually hunts aliens. There aren’t enough creepy cases that point to aliens or unsolved paranormal mysteries to assign to even one guy in a basement.

However, his lack of presence diluted the traumatic event his character suffered in the middle of the story. He was murdered. Thus, I had a difficult time empathizing the raw emotions Janelle felt.

Mrs. Tenner was bipolar. I had mixed feelings about her character. On one hand, I didn't like how Unrav' relegated Mrs. Tenner as a background character because she was why Janelle's family was broken for the lack of a better word. On the other hand, I was glad for her large absence because I didn't care for more angst. Not as if Janelle didn't have a basketful of issues to contend.

Jared, like his sister, was mature. I disdained Janelle when she infantilized Jared. I understood her intention to shield Jared but she did it at the detriment of their relationship. I would not be surprised if in book 2 Jared gets into a sticky situation because he wanted to know what his dear sister was doing.

+++ Alex the Best Friend

Alex was a great best friend. He was more level-headed than Janelle. I didn't like how Janelle's love interest took the spotlight away from Alex. I liked Alex enough that I was sad and angry at how the book treated him. He got shot and bled to death. How was it that Janelle who was in worse shape upon her death was savable but Alex who got one bullet wound wasn't? I felt the book made Alex this throwaway character so ending could be emotional without fail.

+++ Ben the Love Interest

Ben was too perfect to be real. He hid his hot self under the façade of a stoner. He was nice, sensitive, thoughtful, and helpful when it counted. And he had a power that could be used to save people. Ben was a complete knight in shining armor.

One thing I did like about Ben was how he told Janelle their relationship wasn't going to last even though they loved each other. Even so, I found the romance mushy. His constant I-Love-You-ing might had something to do with it. Honestly, Fringe did it better with Olivia and Peter.

+++ Reid & Elijah, Ben's friends

There were barely any differences between the two boys. The only way I could differentiate between Rude Boy 1 and Rude Boy 2 was that one of them — Elijah — was more vocal about his disapproval of Ben's relationship with Janelle. It annoyed me but I understood their reasons. Ben and his friends worked too hard on their goal — they wanted to return to their home universe — to throw it all away for teenage love which in comparison seems insignificant. I was surprised at the twist coming from one of the boys but I found its revelation incredibly shallow. I had a difficult time believing Ben could be so oblivious to his friends' mistakes.

+++ Struz & Barclay, the FBI agents

Struz was Janelle's father's good friend and fellow agent. He provided relief to Janelle's family complications. I liked it but sometime I felt he was there in the story for Janelle's convenience.

Barclay was an FBI agent, subordinate to Janelle's father. For a character who was supposedly stubborn, he answered to Janelle too easily, even when she blackmailed and bribed him (points for Janelle for being resourceful). In addition, the twist about his character should have made him abundantly reluctant to divulge classified information.

In Conclusion

There was nothing groundbreaking about Unrav'. Janelle was cool, but the rest of the cast didn't develop beyond the tropes. The main antagonist, for causing so much problems, had so little character development.

The chapters began with a countdown; instead of "Chapter 1" it was "24:00:14:32" in days, hours, minutes, and seconds respectively. It gave the story a similar suspense from the TV show 24. There some roughness to the pacing, but Unrav' moved fast and I devoured the book quickly.

I couldn't rate Unrav' higher because of the loose ends. Though Unrav' was a pale imitation of Fringe, I still enjoyed it. I rate Unrav' 3-stars for I liked it.

I recommend the book for readers looking an action-packed story with some romance. In short, it was a romantic thriller — a part of the book's pitch that I thought best described the book.

Readers looking for more YA about parallel universe should scope the following:

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