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5.81k reviews for:

Verten

Stephenie Meyer

3.71 AVERAGE

adventurous challenging hopeful mysterious tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: No
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: No

I enjoyed this book. I didn't think it had the same passion as her Twilight series, but I liked the original plot very much.

Such a banger

This book amazed me actually. It's so much better than twilight. It actually has soul and you can somewhat relate to the characters, even though one of them is an alien... It's so crazy and I've read it twice. I couldn't believe that there could be another good book out there for me to read but here it is with the creepy picture of an eye on it. I thoroughly enjoyed this book because of the writing style. I'm not much of a sci-fi person but I really enjoyed it. The relationship between Melanie and Wanda became like e and my own sister later. Not quite liking each other but still liking the others prescence. I suggest this book for anyone who likes aliens, trying to survive the end of the world, and a little romance on the side.
adventurous challenging dark emotional sad tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes
adventurous hopeful mysterious tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Loveable characters: Yes
challenging reflective tense slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Having read all 4 Twilight books in 4 days, I wasn't sure what to expect from this one but I figured I would probably at least find something to like in it. I had heard from a few friends that a) it was crap or b) Stephenie Meyer must have been high on drugs when she came up with the idea for this book. haha. In the end though what I think is that this is a really compelling world she's built, though I admit that some of the names she gave planets and types of aliens there were a bit sickly-sweet (though this was pretty fitting considering the souls were the ones who were giving said places/species their names, and they were a fundamentally gentle, harmless species). This story had great conflict and I'm not really a lover of love triangles but in this case it was okay, because it was a pretty feasible scenario. Many of the characters involved in the triangle (or "quadrangle" as I called it sometimes) were torn but one, Ian, knew what he wanted all along.

Anyway, I think I liked this story because I much prefer to read about aliens than vampires nowadays. I guess the whole "I'm dead" thing doesn't do it for me, though I admit that I love reading about ghosts. I see them as something other than walking corpses, you see (I have heard of vampire series that involve living vampires, and I'd totally be up for reading those). BUT back to the review of this story. There were aspects of it that disappointed me. One thing that really irritated me was how Meyer kept emphasising that Jared "owned" Melanie's body more than even Melanie herself did. But I guess that makes sense in Meyer's life outlook. I dunno, it just made me feel a bit icky about their relationship. Others mentioned in their reviews that Jared hitting Mel/Wanda and her still loving him and wanting him despite that was not a good message, and I'd agree, but it was kind of understandable that he'd behave that way when a bodysnatcher was holding his true love hostage. Still, you'd think he would find it tough to smack the body of his beloved around like that. Guess not. Jared was definitely the hardest character though, even harder than Jeb I think - but the sort of hard that was bad, i.e. he'd let himself get too weathered or something.

I hear that there are going to be two more books in this series that is not quite yet a series, and that Meyer is writing #2 right now. I'll definitely read whatever else she writes in this world, but I can't see where she'd want to go from where she's already been, to be honest. Part of me wishes that Wanda had stayed in Mel's body and got with Jared, which makes me a total weirdo I know 'cause Ian is totally the nicer person, but Jared's "raging fire" passion is definitely hard to forget about!

That might be all I have to say for now, though it's possible I have more. I haven't put this review up on GoodReads yet but will do later today, assuming I remember. ;)

I really enjoyed this book! But I will admit that if I weren't a fan of the Twilight series I know I would never have read this novel just because I don't usually read sci-fi stories.

But by the end I was crying and rooting for the characters, and would absolutely love to see a sequel to the story just to see how well the human race is persevering against their alien inhabitants.

I listened to this on CD and it was so good. I think reading it would have been a bit more confusing having to differente between the two girls, but I don't know for sure. It's one of those books though that I still find myself thinking about every once and awhile because of it's intriguing ideas.